Wasps are excellent predators of pests and can play a big role in controlling them: IISc professor

Wasps person a large imaginable to beryllium beneficial insects and tin play a larger ecological relation successful controlling pests, said Raghavendra Gadagkar, prof and National Science Chair, Centre for Ecological Sciences, IISc.

Delivering the T.N. Ananthakrishnan Birth Centenary Lecture connected “You are however overmuch you eat: Caste and nutrition successful the Indian insubstantial wasp, Ropalidia marginata”, Dr. Gadagkar said that for a agelong clip the absorption connected beneficial insects has been bees and that cipher truly looked astatine the wasps.

Larger ecological role

“But successful caller years it has been recorded that wasps are fantabulous predators of pests and they are being utilized present for pest control. In the past 5 to 10 years radical person woken up to the possibilities of wasps playing a larger ecological relation particularly successful presumption of pest control,” Dr. Gadagkar said.

He added that nutrition is the cardinal and that wasps which devour much go egg-layers, and well-fed larvae make into adults who provender much and go ovum layers.

“Wasps who provender much make ovaries early. Behaviourally ascendant and well- fed wasps thin to permission their natal nets to find caller nests either unsocial oregon jointly. They hole for this aboriginal by altering their behaviour some connected and disconnected the nest,” helium added.

Specialised tasks

Dr. Gadagkar said that part of labour is simply a cardinal spot of societal insects and antithetic individuals specialise successful antithetic tasks. “Such differentially specialised individuals are termed castes,” Dr. Gadagkar said.

S.N. Puri, erstwhile Vice-Chancellor, MPKV, Rahuri & Central Agricultural University, Imphal, emphasised the value of probe connected technologies utilized successful earthy farming and standardisation of drone exertion for delivering assorted biocontrol agents.

NPS scheme

J.P. Singh, Plant Protection Advisor, Government of India, briefed astir the National Pest Surveillance Scheme (NPSS) and stressed the value of pest scouting for deciding the close dose and usage of pesticides by the farmers.