HOW TO GET RID OF STORED GRAIN PESTS?

 

Greetings everyone! Welcome to What's around us, I am back with another exciting article. Now a days I have been maddened by those tiny little ants trail moving everywhere around the kitchen, on the sugar containers and other sweet food. Tried using the ant traps but no use. Its not just the ants who are the stored grain thieves, yet there are many, like

  weevils on rice, beetles on pulses, grain borer and tamarind pest. 

Insects starts evolving resistance to chemical pesticides after some generations. So when these little creatures are smart enough to escape from our methods, then we should be a step ahead of them; initially fumigation with chemical pesticides, but there are some ill effects on human health by practicing it. So what could be the other methods to control them??

When I was doing my project research on the controlling of mosquito larvae, my Professor always wanted us to try plant extracts this makes up the implementation of biological method in the field of vector biology. First reason as you all have guessed, plant extracts are eco-friendly, easily available, natural larvicidal, ovicidal properties and more over no records are found suggesting the vectors evolutioning resistance over plant extracts. Intresting, isn't it? If the same methods are applied to control our house hold grain pests then who effective it could be? 

So keeping all these things in mind, CFTRI Mysore, Food protection and saftey department has a found out the biofumigation to control stored pests. Biofumigation is nothing but usage of plant extracts which helps in eliminating the pest colonies. Here are some locally available spices and from which effective biofumigants are extracted, 

1. Piperine: Extracted from pepper (Piper nigrum)

2. Trans-anethole: Extracted from Star anise (Illicum verum)

3. Eugenol: Can be extracted from clove oil, nutmeg, cinnamon, bay leaf etc

4. Clove oil: From cloves (Syzygium aromaticum)

5. Cinnamaldehyde: Extracted from cinnamon (Cinnamomum verum)

These compounds have shown the potential biofumigant properties by helping us to control the stored grain pests by bioassays. They are also effective against microbes, can be used in making mosquito repellent herbal coils, cockroach traps and baits, the formulation has been transferred to many agencies including KVIC. So that's it for the day, I guess now you might have got some idea, how you can avoid pests entering your food containers. Now let me go and add some cloves and cinnamon into the sugar containers. 

I extend my special thanks to CFTRI Mysore Director, Departments and all the staff members for providing me with the necessary information and aids.