Journal of Environmental Biology

Integrated insect pest management of tropical forest insect pests: an eco-friendly approach

Dr. Nitin Kulkarni

Director,

ICFRE-Rain Forest Research Institute, Jorhat (Assam) – 785010 (India)

Consulting Editor, Journal of Environmental Biology, Lucknow-226 022 (India)

Email : kulkarni_n27@hotmail.com

Abstract

           Forests in India contribute one of the principal natural resources even with mere coverage of 21.71% or 7,13,789 sq km (ISFR, 2021) of the total geographical area. Vegetation also varies from tropical evergreen in Andaman and Nicobar Islands to dry Alpine forests high up in the Himalayas. Insect pests, which form an integral part of the existing ecosystem, are also the major biological determinants influencing development and destruction of forest and its forest products from seeds in stands to timber in depots, besides medicinal plants as minor forest produce. Unlike agriculture, longer gestation period crops, make it difficult to make frequent assessments of the revenue losses caused by forest insect pests in a vast and diverse country like India. However, as per an estimate in 1950s, forestry insect pests cost Rs.53.70 million (10% of the total revenue, which was 537 million at that time).

The tropical forests are found between Tropic of Cancer (23.5°N latitude) and the Tropic of Capricorn (23.5°S latitude). They occupy 10% of the total land mass of the world above sea level. Tropical forest cover approximately is about 1,700 million hectares of geographical area (FAO, 1993), under the political barriers of more than 90 countries of North America, Central America, South America, Caribbean, Central Africa, East Africa, West Africa, Southeast Asia including India, under the tropical region (Redublo, 2016). Most of these are the biodiversity hotspots with similarly diverse entomofauna, as high as 30 million living species, which includes beneficial and insect pest fauna.

Insects have their essential roles in forest ecosystem processes, such as facilitating removal of weakened trees, decomposition of dead or decaying trees, nutrient cycling, biodiversity maintenance, and forest regeneration and succession. However, their population outbreak is a major biotic disturbance (FAO, 2007; Sambaraju et al., 2024). Insect pests infesting forest trees at various stages, viz., inflorescence, fruits, seeds on standing trees and storage (Kulkarni and Joshi, 1998), seedlings in forest nurseries (Thakur, 2000), plantations and natural forests (Kulkarni, 2014) in India have earlier been compiled. With global perspective, Wylie and Speight (2012) have compiled an excellent book describing a number of insect species.

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