Department of Agricultural Entomology, Bidhan Chandra Krishi Viswavidyalaya, Mohanpur-741252, West Bengal, (India).
Present address: Bidhan Chandra Krishi Viswavidyalaya, Regional Research Station, Red and Laterite Zone, Jhargram-721 507, West Bengal, (India).
A field study was conducted to assess the effects of an integrated approach against rice pests. The integrated treatment had the following components: seed treatment for 8 hour seed soaking with ethyl mercuric chloride (EMC) at 0.01% a.i. and agrimycin at 0.025% a.i., burning of crop residues, deep ploughing and solarization for 14 days, neem cake in seed bed @ 2kg/m2 and @ 300 kg/ha in main field, clean cultivation and sanitation, survey and surveilance, foliar application of neem seed kernel extract (NSKE) @ 8 ml a.i./litre; tetracycline at 800 ppm; benomyl @ 0.1% a.i., carbofuran @ 2 kg a.i./ha and phosphamidon @ 2 ml a.i./litre. This integrated treatment was found very effective in checking the growth and development of the pest population and damage caused by it. It gave very good yields, 4.59 and 4.39 t/ha in two seasons and was significantly superior to chemical method (EMC, agrimycin tetracycline, phosphamidon, benomyl, carbofuran in more than one application) which recorded yields of 3.71 and 3.62 t/ha across two seasons and appeared quite safe to the natural enemies. It appeared that the prophylactic components in the integrated treatments produced expected effects and kept the pest population at low levels. As a result, just two need-based applications each for disease and insect pests with synthetic chemicals along with three insecticidal applications with neem seed kernel extraet afforded very effeetive protection. Integrated method cut down the use of synthetie chemieals quite substantially. The chemieal method with mueh larger amount of synthetic ehemicals failed to afford adequate protection and though moderate yields were obtained but yield loss was quite substantial and the survival rate of the natural enemies was very poor.
