Scarab Beetle Scares Farmers

Every year Kharif crops get ravaged by small non descript looking beetles known as Scarab beetle or leaf beetle. Their young known as White grub or root grub live and feed on roots of various plants, but especially Neem and Khejri trees that commonly line farm boundaries. The adult insects feed on valuable crops of all kinds and especially love banana! The affected banana plants start wilting and yellowing, and soon become so weak that they easily collapse.

Farmer Mansukh Dange used to apply various chemical based fertilizers such as Dantotsu  (applied as 100 gm in water for 1000 plants) or Chlorpyriphos. Not facing much success, he decided to get in touch with AKF team for a technical help.

Upon the advice of Mr Rahul Mane, our resident banana expert, Mr Dange tried out a new branch of insecticides known and “biopesticides”. These are biological formulations made from such natural materials as animals, plants, bacteria, and certain minerals, that are generally a non-toxic way to control the population of insects and pests. AKF urges its farmers to try out biopesticides and bio fungicides where available, and use them as a prevention as well as a cure.

On the market are available a host of cures for white grub infestations made usually from pathogenic nematode infecting white grub such as Metahizium (e.g. Sun Bio Meta) or a consortium of useful microbes (E.g. GrubNil, Grubban PR)

As prevention is better than cure, many farmers go for low-cost solution of white grub and beetle infestation such as kerosine traps which laid at night, can trap adult insects that can be destroyed. Even more effective are pheromone traps which are widely available on the market and work best for insect problems.