Information Communication Technology Based Pest Surveillance in India: A Path-Breaking Initiative

Abstract

Pest surveillance or monitoring is the cornerstone of the philosophy of integrated pest management (IPM) as compared to calendar-based treatments. The IPM stresses monitoring of pest and determines when the action is required to be taken up. The basic purpose of surveillance is to determine whether pests are present in the field at a level to initiate pest-management interventions. Through regular and systematic pest surveillance, epidemic situations can be avoided by detecting damage before endemic establishment of a pest in any area. New technologies have made significant impact in the field of pest management but not much of information communication technologies (ICT) are being implemented by the agencies. Use of ICT for pest surveillance constitutes Internet-based surveillance that is basically an internet-based system of capturing pest information from fields and producing instant and customized pest reports to the plant protection experts to advise the state agriculture agencies who further advise concerned farmers and the same information is available for agricultural policy planners. The term ‘Internet Based surveillance’ encompasses computer-based storage, transfer, retrieval, sharing, and reporting of pest data for appropriate and timely decisionmaking for better pest management.