Current Concepts In Crop Protection

The book 'Current Concepts in Crop Protection' comprising of 15 chapters has addressed the current issues and challenges of crop protection encompassing traditional practices, technological breakthroughs, ecological and economical considerations and finally sustainability concerns. The present book attempts to cover plant pathogens, insect and non-insect pests, weeds, and nematodes. The chapter on climate change has discussed the fate of biocontrol agents in global climate change scenario in addition to that of various plant pests in agroecosystem. The following chapter on nanotechnology has reviewed the latest works done in plant protection aspects. Considering the enormous work on biotechnology being carried out with regard to crop protection, two separate chapters were invited which gave a thorough update in a concise manner. Role of information and communication technology have been elaborated in chapter no. 3 and 9. The latest developments in cultural management of crop pests have been highlighted in chapter no. 6. Indigenous technical knowledge (ITK) of crop protection practiced in India has been presented in chapter no. 7. The specific set of crop protection problems and their remedies under protected cultivation has been discussed in chapter no 8. Residual toxicity of pesticides and environmental concerns are propelling the efforts in development of newer plant protection chemicals (fungicides, insecticides and herbicides) which have been mainly presented in tabular form in chapter no. 10. Nature's bounty on crop protection in the form of various botanicals with excellent details concerning all plant pests have found place in chapter no. 11. The concept of conservation biological control has been elaborated in chapter no. 12. Crop protection with legal means at a time of increased inter-country agricultural trade and sustainability issues have been described in a lucid manner in chapter no. 13 and 15 respectively. The chapter no. 14 has dealt with the prokaryotic plant pathogen phytoplasma. The chapters in the book highlight the present crop protection scenario targeting the needs of undergraduate and postgraduate students, educationists, researchers engaged in crop protection in particular and agriculturists in general.