Trap Cropping
By Midlaj
Conventional agricultural practices have negative impacts on the environment, human health, and food security, including pesticide contamination, insect pest resistance, and harm to non-target organisms like pollinators and beneficial insects. This has led to a shift towards alternative, environmentally friendly management strategies, such as cultural control, biological control, and physical control for insect pest management.
Pest management in organic crop production generally involves manipulating habitats through farm ecosystem and biological control measures.
In this, trap cropping is one of the major and effective strategies coming under cultural control. Trap cropping is a component of the ecological framework for manipulating an agroecosystem’s habitat to manage pests.
Trap crops have been defined as “plant stands grown to attract insects or other organisms like nematodes to protect target crops from pest attack, preventing the pests from reaching the crop or concentrating them in a certain part of the field where they can be economically destroyed.”