ABSTRACT
The world's traditional heritage of food grain pest control has a great emphasis on sustainable agriculture and eco-friendly practices for getting organic produce. There are several botanicals whose ground powders, leaves, oils and ashes have been used by farmers/ tribal communities and households in grain storage in India since ancient times. Their insecticidal action is not as quick as those of synthetic insecticides. Yet these have certain advantages, being least toxic to mammals, possess long time surface persistence, without any adverse effect on germination ability of seed, cooking or milling, etc. In recent years these plant resources need to be validated against food grain pests. In this respect, some botanicals were screened at the laboratory of Agharkar Research Institute, Pune using different methods and host insect interactions.
