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How robust is our pesticide policy? A case of waiting period or post-harvest interval for safe consumption of produce

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Top: Saurashtra farmer who was keen to offer us a gift of maize, but for spray a day before; Bottom: Ready to spray with mixture on cotton.   As early as 1985, India recognised importance of integrated pest management to achieving optimal crop protection in its agricultural policy. This policy also envisaged reduction in the use of synthetic pesticides and increase in eco-friendly safe tactics in the agroecosystem. Safety to all is pivotal of crop protection policy. However, synthetic pesticides remained the bulwark of integrated pest management in agriculture. In fact, consumption of synthetic pesticides has increased over the past two decades from about 45,000 tons to about 60,000 tons. And hence, it has become necessary that we use pesticides judiciously so that farmers save their farm produce from the ravages of pests and at the same time, consumers get foodgrains and other farm produce that are safe to eat. Some years back, I was reading the data on major uses of pesticides, e
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What is there in the name? from Cricket to CRICKET*

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  Photocredit: iStock-Captainflash accessed on 27th March 2024  Some years ago, I gave a seminar on Bt resistance in the American bollworm, Helicoverpa armigera in the University of Melbourne, Australia. At the end of seminar, Prof Dean said it is not American bollworm, but a cotton bollworm. In USA, H. armigera is not found. So, it is misnomer to call it an American bollworm. In India, we are so used to calling it as an American bollworm, that many will find it odd or difficult to relate to calling as cotton bollworm, least they confuse with other bollworms. This species does not find mention in the H M Lefroy’s book, Indian Insect life published in 1909. It is in the latter half of the 20 th century that this insect species was referred to as pod borer [MS Mani’s book, General Entomology] and some time, bollworm of cotton. The American bollworm stuck from the time we started growing upland cotton [new world cotton] belonging to Gossypium hirsutum and to some extent G. barbedanse
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Expanding scope of evaluation of insecticides beyond efficacy and cost to including environmental impact assessment

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    Research Planning meeting at Dr PDKV, Akola-seen from left seated: Dr KV Kharche, Director [Res]; Dr Sharad Gadakh, Vice-Chancellor; Dr GT Gujar and Dr DB Undirwade, HoD Entomology and Director [Ext Edu] A few days ago, I attended a research planning meeting in the discipline of entomology at the Dr Panjabrao Deshmukh Krishi Vidyapeeth, Akola. This is like a project formulation for studying various aspects, especially effective management tactics against the key insect pests damaging the important crops grown in the area under the University’s jurisdiction. The project proposals mostly focussed on the evaluation of insecticides at two different locations in each of two years’ period under the field conditions. The results of evaluation of management tactics are then discussed at the joint AGRISCO meeting which is an annual feature of the agricultural universities in the state of Maharashtra. And on the basis of recommendations arising out of the AGRISCO meeting, these are approved
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Why aren’t entomo-pathogenic nematodes registered under the Insecticides Act 1968?

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  Above: Entomopathogenic nematode- Heterorhabditis [courtesy: late Dr S Ganguly] and Below:  Steinernema infective stages emerging from Galleria cadavers on the right [credit: Dr. Sharad Mohan] below. Pesticides are a broad group of chemicals, biologicals and the latter’s products effective against pests which affect crops, animals and human health. These pesticides are classified as insecticides, fungicides, rodenticides, weedicides etc depending upon the target pests. Since these are selective poisons and yet likely to affect environment as well as human health, their use and many other aspects of their production, storage, transport and marketing are regulated under the Insecticides Act 1968. Synthetic pesticides were the first to come under this Act because of their high toxicity and availability. Over the years, ecologically safe biopesticides were developed. And this group included naturally occurring plant extracts, modified natural products, synthetic natural products like
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Three Years of knee cap replacement [KCR] surgery

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  It was in the second week of Jan 2021 that I had KCR surgery at B L Kapoor Hospital in New Delhi. I have written an account of my experience of surgery earlier in my blog. Last year in Jan 23, I wrote of my experience of two years of surgery in my https://govindgujar.blogspot.com . So, it is natural for me to talk about three years of KCR surgery. I am also completing 71 years of living this January and approximately one and half-year of living in Mumbai. Last year, this time we had planned to visit Europe, but later found out that we have a limited time to complete all formalities as we were stuck with renewal of our passports. We travelled a bit within a country, with Mumbai-A’bad-Jalna-Parbhani-3 Jyotirlings-Shirdi in June; Bharuch-Kevadia-Statue of Unity in Aug; Saurashtra visit in September; Mumbai-Pune, Mumbai-Nashik in Dec all by driving our min-SUV. An account of our travels is given in my blogs. The Year 2023 has been a great as I increased my walking regularly. I walk
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Probit Analysis of bioassays: Sure, you are seriously talking about it

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    After reviewing a manuscript, I thought of talking to my friend who works in the prestigious Government institution to know as to how he estimates various parameters of toxicity like LC50, fiducial limits [FL] or Confidence intervals [CI], intercept. And this reminded me of my days as a M.Sc. student when I would do these calculations using a Facit® manual calculator on a tabulated sheet that our insect toxicology teacher, Dr. B.S. Atri would provide us. It was tedious work involving filling of columns like concentrations, log concentrations, % mortality, their transformation into probits, weighting coefficients, empirical probits, expected probits, working probits and other parameters meticulously up to three decimal points until we came to an equation, y=a+bx, where y is 5.0, a, an intercept and b, a slope and x (log LC50) is what we will calculate. For 95% FL, we used two equations, m1=m-1.96 √ V and m2=m+.6 √ V where m1, m2, lower and upper FLs of LC50, √ square root of varian
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