Insect Pest Loss

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Most of the low productivity in agriculture is as a result of insect pests, diseases and weeds (Oerke 2006). Out of the total available production of 568.7 billion worldwide, they caused an estimated loss of US $243.4 billion in 8 major fixed crops (42%). Amongst these insects cause an estimated loss of 90.4 billion, diseases 76.8 billion and weeds 64.0 billion (Sharma et al. 2002a). Insect’s pests and diseases have the potential to cause 52, 58, 59, 74, 83 and 84 percent loss in wheat, soybean, maize, potato, rice and cotton respectively (Sharma et al. 2001). In the 5 mandate crops of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), the biotic and abiotic stress factors have been estimated to cause a loss of …show more content…

2014). Losses due to biotic stress factors have been estimated at $2.19, 0.51, 1.15, 1.53 and 3.10 billion in sorghum, pearl millet, pigeon pea, chick pea and groundnut respectively (Sharma et al. 2001). Abiotic Stress factors such as moisture stress are maximum loss in yield followed by insects, plant pathogens and weeds in sorghum and pigeon pea while diseases are more important than insects and weeds in pearl millet, groundnut and chickpea (Pinstrup-Andersen and Cohen 2000; Sharma et al. 2002a).
NEED FOR APPLICATION OF BIOTECHNOLOGY IN PEST MANAGEMENT
Massive application of chemicals to reduce the extent of losses due to insect pests, diseases and weeds result in adverse effects on the biological organisms leaves toxic chemical residues in the food and ends up as environmental pollution. These pesticides are not highly selective, 50% of these often reached the non-target crops that are useful to the ecosystem, …show more content…

2000; Uneke 2007). Additionally to widening the pool of helpful genes, gene-splicing also permits the utilization of many desirable genes in an exceedingly single event and reduces the time to introgress novel genes into elite background (Eakin et al. 2014; Mugo et al. 2013). Biotechnology has provided many distinctive opportunities which include: access to novel molecules, ability to change the amount of gene expression, capability to vary the expression pattern of genes and develop transgenic with completely different insecticidal genes (Sharma et al. 2000). Genes conferring resistance to insects have been inserted into crop plants like maize, cotton, potato, tobacco, rice, broccoli, lettuce, walnuts, apples, alfalfa and soybean (James 2003). There has been a vast increase in area planted with transgenic crops from 1.7 million ha in 1996 to 39.5 million ha in 1999 (Eakin et al. 2014; Mugo et al. 2013). In 1997, transgenic crops were fully grown in twelve countries and most of the land planted with genetically improve crops were in just five developed countries (Australia, Canada, Argentina, China and United States) with the United States alone accounting for 80% of the area (James 2003). Some of the developing countries are undergoing the research on transgenic crops

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