INTRODUCTION. Table I. Nutrient value of rice (per 100 g) (Source: USDA Nutrient database). Components Value Components Value Carbohydrates 80 g

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1 INTRODUCTION Rice is one of the most important staple food crop of India for more than 2/3 rd of its population. The slogan Rice is life can be considered appropriate for our country as this crop plays a vital role in our national food security and is a means of livelihood for millions of rural households. Rice is one of the world s largest cereal crop providing the caloric need for millions of people. India produces million tones of rice (Anonymous, 2009 ) while China is first in rice production in the world (Anonymous, 2007). However, at the current rate of population growth, rice production has to enhance to about 120 million tons by 2020 (Survey of Indian Agriculture, 2005). Achieving this target is a major challenge as this increase has to be attained simultaneously with shrinking available land and water resources, scarce and costly labor and other inputs combined with deteriorating environment and climate change. Rice (Oryza sativa L.) is the primary source of food for more than three billion people, it is one of the world s most important staple crops. Rice is consumed after cooking with water. Other edible products include rice flakes, puffed rice, rice wafers and canned rice. It is also used in starch and brewing industries. The byproduct of rice milling i.e. rice husk and bran are used as cattle and poultry feed. Rice straw is a good cattle feed, it is also used in making hats, mats, and ropes. Table I. Nutrient value of rice (per 100 g) (Source: USDA Nutrient database). Components Value Components Value Carbohydrates 80 g Vitamin B mg Sugars 0.12 g Vitamin B mg Dietary fiber 1.3 g Vitamin B mg Fat 0.66 g Calcium 28 mg Protein 7.13 g Magnesium 25mg Water g Iron 0.8 mg 16

2 Major Rice producing countries and their production (In Percentage) 26.00%, 26% 7.50%, 8% 4.89%, 5% 6.80%, 7% 2.80%, 3% 10.20%, 10% China India Bangladesh Myanmar Vietnam 5.30%, 5% Philippines 32.70%, 32% 3.81%, 4% Indonesia Thailand other Fig. I. Major Rice producing countries and their production (in percentage) West Bengal % Andhra Pradesh 15.8% Uttar Pradesh-12.71% Punjab % Orissa-10.86% Tamil Nadu-7.31% Chattisgarh-7.08% Bihar-5.4% Karnataka-5.34% Haryana-3.7% Others -3.61% Fig. II. Major Rice producing states in India and their production (in percentage) 17

3 However, all the above appears feasible as Indian Agriculture has advanced over the past decades and technological achievments in Agricultural practices include the use of high yielding varieties (HYVs), fertililizers, improved irrigation systems, new farming system and more recently the introduction of hybrid rice. These technological changes while on one hand have resulted in higher yield per unit area, but on other have posed problem in pest and / diseases scenario which may include emergence of new pests/ diseases, changes in severity of existing pests/ diseases in particular areas and carry over of pests/ diseases from existing into newer areas, etc (Survey of Indian Agriculture, 2007). Insects are one of the major limiting factors in agricultural production. Annually Rs crore worth of agricultural produce is lost due to pests and diseases. They not only significantly affect quantity of the commercial crops but its quality as well. Several insecticides and other chemicals were developed and found effective against many insect pests. Evidence of resurgence in pest population caused by development of resistance due to increased use of pesticides has been reported. Use of synthetic pyrethroids in recent years caused a severe white fly outbreak in cotton in Gujrat, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. Besides, most of the insecticides are highly toxic to man and livestock and generally pollute the entire environment. Persistent residues of chlorinated hydrocarbons are highly poisonous to human beings and their traces have been recovered from vegetables, milk oil, butter, meat and in mother's milk (Jayaraj, 1989). The growing concern about the toxic effect of these chemicals has created a need to develop suitable non - toxic and eco - friendly biopesticides as alternatives to such hazardous chemicals. Pest and diseases form a major group of constraints in achieving the targeted grain yield in paddy (Dhan me IPM ) in India. The insect pest scenario in rice crop has undergone tremendous change in the recent years and many pests of minor importance have started assuming a major status. During the green revolution in the sixties and seventies, leaf and plant hoppers, Grass Hoppers, Stem Borers, and Bugs became important pests, most notably the leaf hoppers, Nilaparvata lugens (Stal), the Brown Plant Hopper (BPH) and Sogatella furcifera (Horvath), and the Green Leaf Hopper (GLH) Nephotettix virescens (Distant), Kharif Grass Hoppers Hieroglyphus 18

4 banian, Yellow Stem Borer Scripophaga incertulas (Walker), White Stem Borer Scripophaga Innolala (walker), Pink Stem Borer Sesamia inference (Walker) Rice Gundhi Bug Leptocorisa acuta, Rice Hispa Beetle Dicladispa armigera. Other insect pest of rice are Rice Gall Midge Orselia oryzae (Wood-Mason) (Diptera: Cecidomyiidae), the rice leaf folder complex of which three have attained pest status: Cnaphalocrocis medinalis (Guenee), Marasmia patnalis Bradley and M. exigua (Butler) (Lepidoptera: Pyralidae), pentatomid bugs, Rice Thrips (Thysanoptera: Thripidae), rice caseworm Nymphula depunctalis (Guenee) (Lepidoptera: Pyralidae) and whorl maggot flies (several species of the genus Hydrellia (Diptera: Ephydridae) (Pahthak and Khan 1994). In Allahabad region mostly found pests on rice crop include Yellow Stem Borer (Scripophaga incertulas), Kharif Grass Hoppers (Hieroglyphus banian), Rice Hispa Beetles (Dicladispa armigera), Rice Gundhi Bugs (Leptocorisa acuta) and Brown Plant Hopper (Nilaparvata lugens). Yellow Stem Borers are major insect pests of rice widely distributed throughout in India. An average loss of kg of paddy per hectare has been reported. In Rice Gundhi Bug (Leptocorisa acuta) (thumb), both nymphs and adults are destructive to the crop, even though the damage by nymphs is more severe (Dale, 1994). Kharif Grass Hoppers (Hieroglyphus banian) (Fabricius) start feeding on the crop just after emergence and fully develops within 3 weeks. The adults are seen feeding voraciously during August and September. The Rice Hispa Beetle (Dicladispa armigera) (Oliver), feeds on the green matter of the tender leaves producing the characteristic narrow white lines on them (Ashoken and Pathak 2000). A considerable proportion of the rice crop is also damaged each year due to diseases caused by various bacteria, fungi and viruses. Several disease include brown leaf spot (Helminthosporium oryzae), leaf blast (Pyricularia oryzae), sheath blight (Rhizoctonia solani), bacterial leaf blight (Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae) are most serious diseases of irrigated rice. Bacterial leaf blight occurs in both the first and second cropping seasons. Rice crop is affected by brown leaf spot, blast, sheath blight, foot rot, stem rot, bunt and smut. Brown leaf spot is the major constraint in rice production in India. Losses due to brown leaf spot have been estimated to be 6.15 million tones in eastern part of India. This disease occurs in all rice growing regions in the world (Prasad 19

5 et al., 1998). Major out break was Bengal famine of when losses up to 90 per cent were recorded (Ghose et al., 1960). In India, the disease is prevalent in all rice growing areas including West Bengal, part of U.P., Assam, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala, (Ou, 1985). The brown leaf spot causes blight of seedling. In mature plants, leaf spotting is the most common symptom of the disease, which is brown in colour. The pathogen perpetuates through seed, soil and on some weed hosts and secondary infection by air-borne conidia also occurs (Biswas et al. 2008). One of the features of these fungi is that they generate spores, called conidia. These conidia are carried in the rice seed and when it germinates, the burden imposed by the growing fungus on the developing plants is that the seedlings are weakened and crop yields are drastically reduced. Optimum temperature for formation of conidia is C although they can germinate at temperatures from 5 0 C C. The fungus produces several toxins one of which is cochliobolin. It is highly toxic to rice seedling inhibiting the growth of the roots and affecting respiration of leaves by destroying the chemical and physical equilibrium of the protoplasm. Abundant amounts of proteolytic enzymes are also produced by the fungus in cultures as well as in the host tissues. These enzymes cause breakdown of protein fragments of the cell walls resulting in partial disintegration of the cell (Singh, 2005). Rice suffers from many diseases caused by fungi, bacteria, viruses, phytoplasmas, nematodes and other non-parasitic diseases. Among the fungal diseases, blast (Phyricularia grisea (Cook) Sacc, and sheath blight of rice (Rhizoctonia solani Kuhn) are more prevalent and are very destructive. Biotechnology has a great potential in biological control, which fits in very well within the modern agricultural concept of Integrated Pest Management. Biocontrol methods wherever tried judiciously on experimental scales, have proved successful in an array of diverse situations. Biocontrol agents / biopesticides are target specific and environment friendly due to their higher selectivity and biodegradable nature. The biocontrol agents viz., parasites, predators, insect pathogens, antagonistic organisms, weed killers etc., besides offering number of advantages over synthetic chemicals, also have added advantage of being self perpetuating and establishing for many years in the ecosystem offering nearly, permanent control (Gupta, 2003). 20

6 Indiscriminate and excessive applications of synthetic pesticides have not only damaged environment and agriculture but have also caused their entry into the food chain. Evidences of pesticide threats to human health and economic effects have been documented in several studies (Rola and Pingali, 1993; Antle and Pingali, 1994). Integrated pest management, which is essentially a knowledge-based technology, involves integration of different methods of disease and pest management. This technology has not only shown decreased applications of pesticides and low environmental risks but has also raised crop yields and net returns. However, despite these favourable results, its adoption has remained miniscule. Farmers adoption of integrated pest management (IPM) package depends on many factors, such as their technical skill and socioeconomic conditions as well as psychological and cultural factors, etc. Since farmers are the final decision-makers for adoption of any technology, it is important for the technology developers/providers to identify how farmers react to the provided techniques and what about the adoption process of certain innovations. However, not much attention has been paid to assessing of farmers perception and knowledge. The combined impact of all these problems together with the rising cost pesticides provided the necessary feedback for limiting the use of chemical control strategy and led to the development of the IPM concept. The idea of Integrated Pest Management first appears to be conceived by Hopskins et al.,(1993) and means that harmonious & judicious use of all the plant protection measure in such a manner that pest population remains below economic threshold level. Bio intensive IPM is the modified approach of this strategy in which bioagents/ bio pesticides are primarily used. Various bio-agents/ bio pesticides viz., Trichoderma spp., Pseudomonas florescens, Beauveria bassiana, Paecilomyes lilacinus, Ha- NPV have been successfully used in controlling a large number of pests & diseases. The bio-control agents act to suppress the population of the pathogenic organisms through competition with pathogenic organisms, stimulated plant growth may allow plant to quickly outgrow any pathogen effects, or damage the pathogen by means of toxins produced (Cook, 2000 and Gilreath, 2002). Biological agents are derived from natural 21

7 materials such as animals plants, bacteria, fungus and certain minerals, fungus exhibiting mycoparasitic behaviour eliminates the threat of synthetic fungicides. For control of these insect pest of rice chemicals are enough, but chemicals are harmful to environment and human beings. Use of some botanical i.e. NSKE, NEEM OIL, and some biocontrol agents i.e. EPN (entomopathogenic nematodes), EPFs (entomopathogenic fungi). like Beauveria bassiana, Metarhizium anisopliae, Verticillium leccani. These entomopathogenic fungi are used against many insect pests. But it is specially against sucking pests. Beauveria bassiana (Bals.) and Metarhizium anisopliae (Met.) Sorokin are two species of entomopathogenic fungi, belonging to the Hyphomycetes group that is natural inhabitants of soil, where they are found infecting a wide range of insect species that spend at least one stage of their life cycle in the soil. They are also found in agricultural crops as epizooties on defoliator lepidopteran larval populations. The main infection route is through the integument, although they can also be ingested and enter the host insect through the digestive tract, or through the trachea, or wounds (Madelin, 1963). Trichoderma spp is a fungal bio-control agent that attacks a antagonism range of pathogenic fungi, Trichoderma species is used in the biological control of several plant disease (Papavizas, 1985 and Samuels, 1996). Trichoderma spp are ubiquitous type of fungi in the soil, affecting growth, proliferation of pathogenic fungi & are thus as biocontrol agents. Trichoderma harzianum, Trichoderma viride and Pseudomonas fluorescens are being used against Helminthosporium oryzae (Biswas et al., 2008). In line with above, the directorate of agriculture, Uttar Pradesh has also formulated and is promoting & recommending and has given a major thrust in its development plan on implementation of IPM module for paddy (Kharif phasalon ki saghan paddhatian-2007). The present studies are aimed at evaluating and validating the recommended IPM Module for paddy in UP for Allahabad district. Besides, in light of recent developments in Plant protection Technology, Some new components in existing module will be also evaluated. 22

8 Keeping in view the above points the present study entitled Evaluation and Validation of IPM modules in Paddy for Allahabad district was conducted with the following objectives: 1. To evaluation and validation of existing IPM modules for Paddy recommended by the Department of Agriculture for Uttar Pradesh, under field condition. 2. To evaluation and validation of new IPM modules for Paddy designed in line with recent developments in Plant Protection Technology, under field condition. 3. To comparison of recommended IPM modules with new designed IPM modules and traditional farmer s practices under field condition. 4. To working out the economics of above practices under field condition. 23