Abstract
Termites are the most serious pests of field and horticultural crops, forests, and wooden household furniture. In Hamelmalo Agricultural College (HAC) the infestation of termite is very high resulting in great destruction of crop plants and wooden office and dormitory furniture. The devastating attack of termites should be managed by using best and ecofriendly management method. The purpose of the study was to compare the effectiveness of manual destruction of mounds and killing of termite queen and king, chemical chlorpyrifos, seed and leaves extract of neem and Lantana (as separate experiment) and smoke on termite control. Termite mounds were selected randomly inside HAC compound. The materials used were hand hoe, spade, fork, water, 20 L jar and protective clothes. The treatments were replicated three times. The botanical treatments were prepared at 2 L of highly concentrated extracts per 20 L of water each. Chlorpyrifos was applied at 20 ml per 20 L of water. Dried woody plants were used for smoke treatment. Careful digging was done to avoid king escape and queen rupture and they were killed by burning. Among all, the mechanical destruction and killing of king and queen and chlorpyrifos resulted in a complete control of the termite population. Except in the mounds treated by chlorpyrifos, the activity of termite population was very active and they closed the opened galleries immediately after treatment even though there were dead termite castes in all treatments. Living termite castes were counted by taking a medium size spade of broken mound pieces. The highest count was recorded from mounds treated by smoke. After two weeks the queen and king in every treatment mound were cheeked and killed for those who were alive. Except by the chlorpyrifos and manual destruction of mound (king and queen were killed before) all the royal families were alive and killed. Controlling of termite population in the field (outside their mound) is not possible due to the hidden foraging activity of termites, environmental safety from chemicals and the high egg laying potential of the queen. Finding the best alternative to control from their source mound for the mound building termites resulted in effective control of the population by manual destruction of mounds and killing of queen and king and chlorpyrifos. By the side effect of chlorpyrifos to untargeted organisms and the time consuming and laborious method of manual destruction of mounds, selection to the best from these two control measure is almost the same.
Highlights
Termites are the most important pests, as they are destructive and major threats to crops and houses infrastructures
Comparing the five treatments in randomly selected mounds which have replicated three times, the chlorpyrifos and manual removal of queen and king resulted in a complete control of termite colonies
In mounds treated with chlorpyrifos and manual removal of the royal family, some of the mounds were left open while others were closed but the growth of the mounds had stopped
Summary
Termites are the most important pests, as they are destructive and major threats to crops and houses infrastructures. Termites cause damages to structural timbers, household furniture, paper products, many other synthetic materials and storage food (if storage rooms/houses/storage materials are not concrete) [1] [2] [3]. Termites damage plants by boring into the roots and stems They can attack crops both in their underground and above ground plant parts and feed on tubers, groundnut pods and seeds, roots, lower and older leaves, stems and lower branches of the plant by biting and chewing. Plants attacked by termites fall down [14]
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