Summary

Current control methods of insects use synthetic neurotoxic chemicals. Due to the concerns on the adverse effects on environment and living organisms by the synthetic neurotoxic insecticides, control methods that use insect specific properties claim high importance.
Therefore, the objectives of this research is to determine the losses of agricultural commodities caused by insects and to test some selected insect-specific compounds as control methods.
Assessing post-harvest losses allow the policy makers to adopt remedial measures based on the recommendations of scientists. The second part of this proposal addresses finding out novel and safe pest management methods. These attempts would help to uplift the socio-economic status of stakeholders engaged in postharvest operations of agricultural commodities. Training students in postgraduate level would make them suitable candidates to take the responsibilities of these tasks in the future. Thus it would be a good investment in terms of capacity building up. The post-harvest damage need to be addressed by Policy makers/decision makers for suitable follow-up activities to reduce the losses.
The findings on reduced-risk insecticides need to be addressed by government institutes such as Department of Agriculture and the Registrar of Pesticides for recommendations.

Objectives

i) Determine the losses to agricultural commodities by stored-product insects.
ii) Determine the performance of aggregation pheromones of T. castaneum and Sitophilus oryzae under different temperature conditions
iii) Determine the residual effect of reduced-risk insecticides on different packaging materials and commodities throughout a storage period

Major Equipment Facilitated by Grant