Crop Protection Management

Crop Protection Management

It includes eradication of pests, pathogens, weeds and other organisms that cause harm to the crop plants.

TYPES:

• Pests: These are the organisms like insects, rats, mites, weeds, fungi etc. which damage or destroy cultivated plants or plant products and can even make them unfit for human consumption.
• Pathogens: These are disease causing organisms and include bacteria, fungi, virus etc.
• Weeds: These are unwanted plants that grow and live at the expense of main crop.

EFFECTIVE METHOD TO CONTROL PESTS:

Pesticides or biocides: Chemicals (poisons) used to kill pests of plants such as insects, fungi, weeds, mites, rats etc. are known as pesticides. They are of following types:

• Fungicides---To kill fungi
• Weedicide---To kill weeds
• Rodenticide ---To kill rodents like rats, moles
• Nematicide ---To kill nematodes

INSECT - PEST CONTROL:

Some insects are serious pests of crop plants such as:

• Chewing insects: Locust, grasshopper, caterpillar larva destroy all sorts of crop plants. Control: By mixing Chlorophyriphos in the soil.
• Sucking insects: Aphids (Aphis), leaf hoppers (Pyrilla) suck cell sap from various plant parts.
• Control: By lindane & thiodane
• Borer insects: Sugarcane borer, pod borer, grain weevil, cotton ball worm. Internal feeders, live inside the parts of crop plants
• Control: By dimeltholate and metasystox.

WEEDS CONTROL:

In crop field many other undesirable plants may grow naturally along with the main crop. These undesirable plants are called weeds. The removal of weeds is called weeding. Weeding is necessary since weeds compete with the crop plants for water, nutrients, space and light. Weeds may be poisonous for animals and human beings.

It can be done by following ways:

• Mechanical methods (By weeding): Removing weeds from crop fields by harrow interculture ploughing, burning & flooding.
• Chemical methods: Using chemicals called herbicides or weedicides e.g. 2, 4 D, nitrofen, atrazine. The dilute weedicides are sprayed during the vegetative growth of weeds before flowering and seed formation. They may be affect the health of farmers. So they should use these chemicals very carefully.

Biological methods:

• Employing living organisms to destroy weeds.
• Cassia plant prevents the growth of parthenium weed
• Herbivorous fish feed on aquatic weeds.

Advantages of biological methods-

• It does not cause pollution.
• Organisms are harmless to the main crop.

Cultural methods:

They include:

• Proper seed & bed preparation
• Timely seed sowing
• Inter cropping
• Crop rotation
• Mixed cropping

PREVENTIVE MEASURES SHOULD BE ADOPTED INSTEAD OF USING PESTICIDES AS:

• Use of pest & disease resistant hybrid varieties of crop plants.
• Selection of optimum time of cropping
• Crop rotation and multiple cropping
• Clean cultivation
• Summer ploughing
• Sowing healthy seeds

HARVESTING:

The cutting of crop after its maturation is called harvesting. It is either done manually by sickle or by a machine called harvester. In the harvested crop, the grain seeds need to be separated from the chaff, This process is called threshing. This is carried out with the help of a machine called ‘combine' which is a combined harvester and thresher. Farmers with small holdings of land do the separation of grain and chaff by winnowing.

The period of harvest is celebrated with great joy and happiness in all parts of India. People celebrate it with great enthusiasm. Special festivals associated with the harvest season are Pongal, Baisakhi, Holi, Diwali, Nabanya and Bihu.