Maize

Stored Grain Pests

Introduction Source of Infestation Management Stored Pests

Introduction

Ever since the advent of stabilized Agriculture, storage of produce has remained an issue of utmost concern.
Unless the problem of storage is solved satisfactorily the problem of hungry millions may continue even with substantial increase in production.
There are a number of estimates of post harvest losses. Most conservative estimates for the post harvest losses in food grains in India even put at about 10%, a quantity good enough to feed at least 60 million people.
Out of the total production, about 70% is retained and stored by farmers for consumption, as seed, feed and payment of wages and only about 30% is marketable surplus.
Insects are responsible for enormous spoilage in storage they feed on grain, bore the kernel, destroy the germ portion, cause heating and deterioration in stored produce.
As per the Pause committee report, the storage losses due to insect pests of stored grain are 2.55%. In addition they are also responsible for the qualitative losses in food grains.

Top

Source of Infestation

Field infestation, insects fly from stores to fields and lay eggs upon the maturing grains.
These eggs hatch out to larvae in favourable conditions when grains reach the stores. They can crawl/fly to fresh stocks and infest them is called cross infestation.
It has been a general practices, specially with farmers, that they keep without cleaning the empty food grain bags for use in the next season only.
Eggs and larvae of insects remain hidden and feed on the grain fragments in the off season. Whenever the grains are filled up in such bags, infestation reappears.
The insects, which may be present in the joints or corners of the carriers, migrate to the food grain lots and cause infestation.

Top

Management

The scientific storage of grains help in minimising the damage by insects, and microorganisms.

The following methods can help in safe storage of grains.

Preventive measures
Curative measures

Preventive measures

Cleaning the storage structures, sealing of cracks, crevices and holes present in the floors. Cleaning of the Sheller before their use.
Storage structures/godowns/gunny bags should be disinfected with approved residual insecticides preferably with Malathion 50% EC, with dilution 1 : 100.
Proper stacking of the filled bags for proper hygiene and sanitation prevents insect damage in the godowns.

Curative measures

The infestation of stored grain insect pests can be minimized by different methods

Physical control measures

Heat treatment of stored grain at 55°- 60° C
Mixing of inert dusts with grain makes entry of insects a difficult task. However here grain has to be washed before consumption.

Mechanical measures

These measures are practicable and include sieving of grains.

Ecological measures

Temperature, moisture content of grain and availability of oxygen have to be suitably manipulated by designing and constructing the storage structures which create unfavourable ecological conditions for insect attack.
Food grains kept in airtight sealed structure remain insect free. Eg. Pusa bin.
Grains with moisture content less than 10% are not suitable for multiplication and survival of most of the insects (except Khapra beetle which can survive but it is susceptible to reduced oxygen content.)

Chemical control measures

These measures are more popular and effective. They may be used as prophylactic and curative treatment.

Prophylactic treatment

These insecticide treatments are to prevent the insect infestation and cross infestation. However insecticide should not be sprayed on food grain directly.
The insecticides and their concentrations recommended for prophylactic treatment of stored grain are Malathion 50 E C at 0.5%, Pxrimiphos methyl 50% EC at 0.5% .

Curative treatment

Mixing of chemicals with food grains meant for human consumption is not recommended. However they can be mixed with grains meant for seed purpose only. Normally pyrethrum dust is used as seed protectant.
Fumigation is the best method for controlling stored insects. However, the fumigation of grains should be carried out under expert supervision and proper caution.
In our country, EDB and EDCT have been recommended for fumigation of food grains. These fumigants should be handled with great care and by trained staff only.

Top

Stored Grain Pests Of Maize

Common Name	Scientific Name
Rice weevil	Sitophilus oryzae
Maize weevil	Sitophilus zeamays
Granary weevil	Sitophilus granarius
Lesser grain borer	Rhizopertha dominica
Khapra beetle	Trichoderma granarium
Red rust flour beetle	Tribolium castaneum
Confused flour beetle	Tribolium confusum
Saw toothed grain beetle	Oryzaephilus surinamen
Rust red grain beetle	Cryptotests ferrugineus
Flat grain beetle	Cryptotests pusillus
Ware house moth	Cadra contella
Angoumois grain moth	Sitotroga cerealella
Indian meal moth	Plodia interpurutella

Top

Telangana

Maize

About Maize

History
Morphology

Maize Management

Services Overview

The key services offered by Ikisan are:

System study, design and development of IT enabled solutions and services for the agri sector.

Execution of rural IT enabled projects on BOT/BOOT/Turnkey basis.

Development, Customization and Deployment of Ikisan's IPR protected software applications.

Providing support services and best management practices for augmenting the marketing development efforts of the groups agricultural input companies (NFCL and NACL).

Development and Dissemination of best practice and information though a unique multi lingual knowledge website for the agri sector.

Some of the key customers/partners that benefit significantly from our work include are Electronics Corporation of India Ltd, State Agricultural Marketing Boards, Central Research Institute for Dryland Agriculture, Tamil Nadu, Centre for Development of Advanced Computing, Motorola Mobility (GOOGLE) etc.

As highlighted earlier Ikisan provides significant support to the market development and marketing efforts of NFCL and NACL by providing best practices and information across the agricultural input value chain - weather, soil, seeds, fertilizers, water, pesticides, output prices etc. that have enabled the companies to develop deep customer relationships and in turn enable them to grow above market growth rates. Recently example in fertilizers includes the development of Customized Fertilizer Grades (for NFCL across India that are crop and location specific have not only reduced the current consumption of fertilizers of farmers but have significantly enhanced crop yields and farmer incomes) that are expected to add significant revenues to the company.

Currently, agriculture value chain is driven by technical expertise. However, there is a lack of adequate Management knowledge and skills amongst the professionals. Therefore, Ikisan and XLRI, Jamshedpur have jointly developed an Agri Business Management Program for Agri-professionals and students. Ikisan provides the domain expertise while XLRI provides pedagogy. This program is a combination of virtual learning and campus based module at XLRI, Jamshedpur. This program has been highly appreciated.

Intellectual Property Rights for many software applications such as Field Manager, Vyapar, Mandi, Quick Solutions Systems, Management Time Table, Agri Information System and Agrecommerz belong to Ikisan. A significant recent development in this area is the introduction of Weather Based Crop Insurance. This entails setting up of Automatic Weather Stations, which provide dynamic village-level data essential for settlement of weather based insurance claims.