Product Description

From time immemorial, insect pests and diseases have been our chief competitors for food and other agricultural produce. In the recent era of agricultural intensification, pest control strategies have relied chiefly on synthetic organic chemical pesticides. But the rapid evolution of insect pests under selection pressure from pesticides and the emergence of newer pests, have led to an energy-driven escalation in pest control technologies through the introduction of new chemicals every year, thus forcing agriculture onto the never-ending pesticide treadmill. Besides putting the sustainability of agriculture at stake, pesticides pose a public health concern through bio-accumulation in the food chain. It is now realized that the use of chemical pesticides is doing more harm than good to the biosphere. The changing perception in pest management thus demands newer, environmentally sound pest control tools. One alternative to the use of synthetic organic pesticides is to tap the help of various plants and entomopathogenic fungi which have evolved an astonishingly diverse array of active agents for fighting diseases and pests.

Neem is one of the plant species that can effectively and efficiently control more than **0 pest species, through it's unique mode of action, namely repellent, oviposition deterrent, anti-feedent, insect growth regulation and sterilent properties. Nimbecidine is a unique natural product and enormously helpful in the Integrated Pest Management system, because it is not an adulticide and does not harm the predators and parasites and does not pollute the environment.

The fungi that infect harmful insects called entomopathegenic fungi and their use as pest control agents has not only attained a prime place in the pest management practices but also become a potentially important alternative to the use of chemical pesticides. Under natural conditions these fungi are a frequent and often important natural mortality factor in all groups of insect population and over **0 species of fungi have been recorded as pathogens to insects. The damaging effects of these entomogenous fungus on the target insects and their ability to cause epizootics offers exciting possibilities for use as mycoinsecticides for the control of insect pests of food crops naturally. Mycoinsecticides are formulated products with live conidia of hypomycetes fungi like Beauveria, Verticillium, Metarhizium, and Paecilomyces as the active ingredients. The conidia, on contact with the cuticle of the insect, germinate and establish a systemic infection leading to the death of the target insect without affecting the other beneficial natural enemies of the insect pest.