Description

"Integrated Pest Management is the judicious use and integration of various pest control tactics in the context associating the environment and pests, in ways that complement the facilitation of biological and other natural controls of pests to meet economic, public health, and environmental goals" IPM is a knowledge-based technology. It involves integration of different methods of disease and pest management to manage an important disease or pest of a crop or to manage all the important diseases and pests of a particular crop or to manage all diseases and pests in a particular cropping system. Under IPM, use of chemical pesticides is discouraged but not totally banned. IPM modules are area specific. They take into consideration not only diseases and insect pests but also availability of inputs. Most of the modules include too many practices, which usually discourage the farmers. They are not ready to invest their entire energy in pest management alone. Therefore, it is important to develop modules involving few critical interventions.