Damage impact of vertebrate pests on different crops and stored food items

Abstract

The sub-continent countries like Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh that fall in the category of developing countries suffer from high economic loss due to the damage to valuable crops. The crops are always under attack by vertebrate pests including rodent and bird pests during the time period of harvesting and storage. Our current study indicates that most of the crop damage and economic loss were caused by rodent pests. Vertebrate rodent pests include Mus musculus (house mouse) and Bandicota bengalensis (lesser bandicoot rat), Rattus norvegicus and Rattus rattus caused damage to crops like sugarcane, maize, household stored food items and grains. On contrary, the major bird pest is Psittacula Krameri (Rose Ringed Parakeet) that caused damage to fruit gardens of Common Fig (Anjeer) and parrots, Guava and Cascabela thevetia (Pilli Kaneri). Rodents damage the seeds, standing crop and food items stored in households. While birds always prefer fresh fruits from the tree. The methodology of the study simply consists of the surveying of the different field of sugarcane, maize, fruit gardens of different villages in district Faisalabad and also includes different research gardens at main campus UAF. After collection, the samples were critically studied for pest identification in the laboratory at the department of zoology, wildlife and Fisheries University of Agriculture Faisalabad. The results demonstrated that both rodent pests and bird pest are equally depredatory towards valuable crops. In order to reduce this loss, we have to bring about the advances in the vertebrate pest management like the use of pesticides (Chemical) and some mechanical methods for trapping, killing and pushing of vertebrate pests.