Integrated pest management in rice

摘要

This paper is a conceptual guide to the recent developments in rice integrated pest management (IPM) within an ecological framework. It does not provide so much a "how to" as a "why to" guide for IPM programmes that are based on ecological processes a nd work towards environmentally friendly and profitable production. IPM in rice has been developing in many countries since the early 1960s. However, much of the development was based on older concepts of IPM, including intensive scouting and economic th resholds that are not applicable under all conditions (Morse and Buhler, 1997) or all pests (e.g. diseases and weeds), especially on smallholder farms where the bulk of the world's rice is grown and that often operate under a weak or non-existing market economy. During the 1980s and 1990s, important ecological information on insect populations became available, making possible a stronger ecological approach to pest management and greater integration of management practices that went beyond scouting and economic threshold levels for decision-making (Kenmore et al., 1984; Gallagher, 1988; Ooi, 1988; Graf et al., 1992; Barrion and Litsinger, 1994; Rubia et al., 1996; Settle et al., 1996).