and Integrated Pest Management - part - usaid

THE SURVEILLANCE AND FORECASTING OF
INSECT POPULATIONS IN RICE PEST
MANAGEMENT
K. L. Heong
MARDI, P.O. Box 12301
50774 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
(Present address: IRRI, Entomology Department
P.O. Box 933, Manila, Philippines)
Pest management decisions rcquire information on the current status of the
crop, on the pest and weather, on past trends, and on the potential losses that
might occur. Based on these and other experiences, future damage is estimated
and a decision on whether to take any control action is made. Norton (1982) has
classified pest management information necds into four main types:
1. Fundamental Information, which is concerned with the biological and
ecological processes, darnoage relationships, control measures, their
effectiveness and consequceces.
2. Historical Information, which is derived from past levels of attack and
daniage. This serves to indicate trends in pest development and to
assess the probabilities of forthcoming attacks and losses.
3. Real-time Inforatmion, which is collected through on-farm monitoring
and regional surveillance. This concerns the current status of the crop
and pest, and includes both diiect and indirect assessments of attack and
damage.
4. Foreas.5 Informatio, which estimates future levels of attack and
damage and is often obtained by combining the three types of
information above through the use of modds.
Fundamental information is often obtained from research and the literature,
while the other three types are generally provided by pest surveillance systems.
In addition, pest surveillance systems are also concerned with inforimation
processing, delivery, and reception.
SURVEILLANCE SYSTEMS IN RICE
The majority of rice growing countries in Asia have pest surveillance
programs. These activities began as early as the 1940s in Japan (Yoshimeki
1967) and programs there are still playing an active role in pest management
(1Hirao 1979). In India, pest surveillance started in 1969 following a widespread
epidemic of tungro. in the Philippines and Thailand, surveillance and early
warning systems (SEWS) are being implemented through the German aid
program. Pest surveillance started in Indonesia in 1975 and there are now 1,160
pest observation units, each supervised by a pest observer.