A NEW APPROACH FOR INTEGRATED PEST MANAGEMENT OF SUGARCANE IN PAKISTAN

Abstract

Conventional Integrated Pest Management (IPM) is mostly described as “a decision-making process using multiple pest management tactics to prevent economically damaging out-breaks while reducing risks to human health and the environment”. Low–level IPM is the most often employed form, consisting of the most basic of IPM practices–scouting and insecticide applications according to economic thresholds. Some growers have progressed to medium–level IPM, the adoption of a few additional preventive measures, e.g. cultural controls and plant resistance, coupled with efforts to cut back on broad spectrum pesticide use in order to protect beneficial organisms. These IPM strategies are mainly targeted towards single pest species and do not consider all the pests in a specific agro-ecosystem. High–level or Bio-intensive IPM, is where multiple interventions are integrated in a bio-intensive approach targeting multiple pests. Bio-intensive IPM is based on holistic agro-ecosystem interactions, in which knowledge about insects, their symbionts, pathogens, natural enemies, plants, endophytes and interactions between all of these are combined to develop IPM in an area-wide, environmentally friendly
manner. Reviewed here are advances in knowledge of, and of biotic interactions between direct, indirectand induced plant resistance, plant nutrition, habitat management, chemical ecology, natural enemies, soil-health, micro- organisms such as endophytic fungi and Wolbachia and phylogenetics and phylo-geography. All of these are potential building blocks of a bio-intensive IPM system under-construction at SRDB, SRI and MNSUAM. Also discussed are opportunities and challenges in these areas of research, considering bio-security threats to the Pakistan sugar industry and possible limitations in current sugarcane plant breeding material.