Diseases and Management of Crops under Protected Cultivation

(Diseases and Management of Crops under Protected Cultivation)
biocontrol research is to place biocontrol products in the growers’ hands, then perhaps there
needs to be more communication between public researchers and industry in the early stages of
development. Research is needed in many areas, particular in mass production, formulation, and
delivery could greatly assist in commercialization of biocontrol agents. More research is needed in
integrating biocontrol agents into production systems, such as in rotating biocontrol with chemical
pesticides and in calculating these into forecast models to choose whether to apply a chemical
pesticide or biocontrol. Continued research in biocontrol is needed to contribute to the movement
toward sustainable agriculture and simply to ensure that alternatives are available if other
management tools fail or are lost. Research on biological control of plant diseases has resulted in
the selection of large numbers of micro-organisms with high potential as biological control agents
against plant diseases and it could lead to alternative strategy of plant disease control. Whether
these research results can be transformed into economically viable tools for agriculture will now
depend on the ability of researchers to attract the interest of industry.
The guidelines / data requirements and minimum infrastructure facilities to be
created by the manufacturers of microbial bio-pesticides (Antagonistic fungi, Entomopathogenic
fungi, Antagonistic bacteria, Entomotoxic bacteria) for their registration under section 9(3b) and
9(3) of the insecticide act, 1968 can be uploaded from the website of Central Insecticides Board
(CIB) of the Ministry of Agriculture.
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