Crop Protection and Sustainable Agriculture

Crop protection is the science and practice of managing pests, plant diseases, and other pest organisms that damage agricultural crops. Pesticides help farmers to reduce crop damage from pests and increase food production. They're very important as they improve the quality and yield of agricultural produce. In agricultural ecosystems, plant protection is the act of overseeing climate, weeds, pests and diseases that harm or repress the development of natural product, vegetable and other crops. Appropriate plant protection is critical to create better yields with insignificant wastage. This increment in efficiency prompts less land, water and work being needed for food crops. With less land being utilized biodiversity is saved and less ozone depleting substances are transmitted. It additionally guarantees more food arrives at the shops and markets in great condition, which assists with holding the costs down.

This book explores the concept of sustainable agricultural development in the developing world, with a particular focus on crop protection. The challenge facing agriculture, particularly in developing countries, is to increase productivity without causing ecological damage. An important aspect of sustainable agriculture is the substitution of chemicals and capital with locally grown biological inputs and knowledge. Production of food grains in India has risen steadily since the 1960s, partly through the introduction of high yielding varieties of rice and wheat together with appropriate agronomic and plant protection practices. Plant breeding programs have improved cultivated rice by the transfer, from wild species, of genes conferring resistance to viral diseases. Diversification of resistance is sought, to render the hybrids less vulnerable to sudden outbreaks of diseases and insect pests. For wheat, resistance to rusts involves the additive interaction of several gene-encoded traits. Linkage of resistance genes with morphological markers enables the inheritance of the former to be followed easily. It is important that recent advances in molecular genetics are incorporated into integrated pest management programs. This will require appropriate social organization.

Crop protection measures largely influence agricultural production worldwide. Since the Green Revolution, weeds are one of the most important constraints for crop production. With the modernization of agriculture, old practices of controlling weeds are no longer sustainable. Thus use of herbicides provided global food security by reducing the crop loss. Moreover, the use of herbicides continues to grow to meet the food demand of the ever-expanding population globally. The major recurring themes are current crop protection practices sustainable; the concept of sustainability; the biological roots of sustainability; anticipated developments in crop protection and sustainability; food production and sustainability; experimentation on sustainable farming systems; and, finally, are integrated crop protection practices moving towards an increased sustainability. Achievements in plant protection are being countered by continued evolution of the pest ecosystem, in part driven by application of pesticides or the introduction of new crop varieties. Future management of the agricultural ecosystem requires the development of a method of 'super-long-term' prediction to evaluate possible consequences of different strategies of plant protection. Crop plants with durable resistance to pests must be derived by conventional breeding or by using biotechnology and genetic engineering. Genetic vulnerability can also be reduced by techniques such as gene rotation and mixed cropping.