Strategies for Minimizing Crop Loss due to Pest and Disease Incidences by Adoption of Weather-Based Plant Protection Techniques

Abstract

Every year crops are being damaged by pests and diseases. Due to lack of proper operational forecasting system for the incidences of pests and diseases, it becomes difficult to adopt plant protection measures at right time. It has been established with fair degree of accuracy that climate/weather play major role in the incidences of pests and diseases. Thus there is great scope of utilizing meteorological parameters for the advance information of the occurrences of pests and diseases and ultimately scheduling of prophylactic measures can be taken scientifically and judiciously. Quite a number of studies on the relation between meteorological parameters and pest and disease incidences have already been made in India. In the present paper a comprehensive discussion has been made on the strategies, starting from development of weather based pests and diseases models to dissemination of the advance information to the farmers through different state of art information technology, are being taken to control and minimize of the loss of crops due to pests and diseases incidences.