Agro-Economist

Indian diets, across states and in different income groups, are unhealthy as most of Indians consume excess amounts of cereals rather than enough proteins, fruits, and vegetables. Apart from these, our country is still lagging in terms of recommended diet level of 300g per day as per capita consumption is only 135 g per day in India. Moreover, in near future, there is a need of around 56 million tons of food to feed our 1.3 billion Indian population expected by the year 2050. Our natural resources are scarce and shrinking day by day due to the expanding urbanization and deforestation and thus thereby posing obstacle to meet the requirement of future demand. Secondly, increased domestic requirement is the other limitations in crop production. In view of the economic importance of vegetable cultivation in Jammu and the magnitudes of the damage caused by the insect pest, it becomes imperative to keep continuous vigil on their bio-dynamics, pest- defender ratio (natural predators and parasitoids) and management studies which will pave the building block for development of effective Integrated Pest Management against major insect pest of important vegetable crops in Jammu region. The main objective of IPM is to reduce pesticide use to minimize/reduce risks to human health and environment.