Integrated Pest Management in the Tropics : Current Status and Future Prospects

The concept of Integrated Pest Management (IPM) was developed as an alternative to chemical pesticides following the widespread realization or their horrifying and damaging effects on environment, human, animal and plant health, which were vividly portrayed in Rachel Carson s book Silent Spring.

The IPM approach involves the use of different tactics in compatible combinations to keep pest populations below the levels at which they cause economics injury.

Thus. the IPM approach minimizes the use of chemical pesticides and avoids their harmful effects.

The development and implementation of IPM has been increasing in North America with successful results.

However, its role in tropical agriculture is less well known.

For this reason, the United Nations Environment Programine (UNEP), and the International Center for Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE) undertook a global review of IPM to assess the impact of related activities in tropical regions of Asia.

Africa and South America. This volume assesses the current status and future prospects for IPM in these regions, it provide a unique overview of the efforts made to develop and implement IPM for the pests of livestock and agroforestry in selected countries in the tropics (including India and China), as well as a survey of IPM strategies on a crop-by-crop basis for each continent.

The book gives an honest appraisal of both the successes and failures of past IPM programmes and provides new paradigms and directions that IPM must develop, if it is to be adopted by farmers and governments on a scale necessary to change their current reliance on chemical pestioldes