Insect-Pests and Diseases in Greenhouse Cultivation and Their Biological Control
Anjani Khulbe, Poonam Batra
Abstract
Global Agriculture industry is under significant pressure due to climate change, continuously decreasing resources and increasing population. In this modern agriculture era, the growers are turning toward advanced technologies to increase production efficiency and crop resilience. Vegetables in India are mainly cultivated according to the seasonal need of a region due to wide range of diverse agro-climatic conditions of the country. Therefore, greenhouse technology for production of high value horticultural crops is gaining a pace everywhere in India, and a trend of gradual increase in acreage of protected farming has been observed. This area has been recorded to be up to 40,000 ha including both horticulture and ornamental crops. The ideal and stable environment for plants under greenhouse also provides a congenial environment for plant growth one hand and an excellent platform for the development of insect-pest and diseases on the other. Many fungal, bacterial, viral, and nematode diseases and various pests can be seen in the greenhouse conditions if managed inadequately that may affect the crop(s) to a great extent under protected environment. The mode of managing the insect-pest and disease problem under green house is still chemical treatment, but seeing the increase in occurrence of pesticide resistance and pesticide residues, 218people are moving toward safe option of biological control. The chapter is being discussed below and it briefly covers the insect-pests and diseases that can be commonly observed under protected cultivation along with the biological control measures which can be useful in their management. Various biological control agents like Trichoderma harzianum Strain T-22, Strain T-39; Streptomyces griseoviridis Strain K6; Bacillus firmus BioNem WP, Verticillium lecanii Bacillus thuringiensis, etc., are commercially available and widely used by the farmers but there are several other bio-control agents (BCAs) that need to be popularized by ensuring their availability to the farmers. An account of such bioagents has been given in order to widen the arena of non-chemical options that are available worldwide. In a country like India, where we find huge diversity of plants, where it is needed now to explore, identify, and develop its own BCAs and reduce the hurdles in the development and use of new bio-pesticides. The chapter gives a brief account of challenges being faced in development, commercialization and use of bio-agents, in order to bring into light, the workable areas for researchers and policy makers to get the real potential of biological control agents especially under protected cultivation.