Insects Pests of South India and their control

Abstract

About 4years ago as an insect pest had the honour of cutting a prominent figure in the Budget disussions of te Madras Legistative Council. In addition to the chronic failure of timely cains that the dry farming ryots of the Bellary Districts are usually afficted with the "Aggipurugu' or "Benkihula" of cholam (Colocoria)had appeared that year and caused an almost local loss of grain."What have the Agricultural Department done in save the ryot from this pest ?demanded the Member for Bellary and naturally much of his wrath decended on the devoted head of the entomologist. Two or three other pests had bid fair to attain to such distinction. though they did not actually get into similar limelight. One of these is the "Rice Army Worm"-Spodeptera mauritia,--known variously as "Karakkotti""Laddepurugu"and 'Arakkan'It is one of those swift scourges of Nature, that seem to descend like the ilghtning on broad stretches of young paddy and disappear altogether after dealling widespread destraction.In the year 1924,numerous villages in Malabar had been afected and there was in loud wail calling for help from verywhere at one time.Later in the season the same year,there were numerous calls for help against "Bambuchu' or 'Chazhi'(the name by which the Rice Bug is known in South Kanara and Malabar respectively)sucking dry the green ears of paddy.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.29321/MAJ.10.002025

Pages

105 - 112

Creative Commons

Copyright

© The Author(s), 2026. Published by Madras Agricultural Students' Union in Madras Agricultural Journal (MAJ). This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited by the user.

Keywords