ABSTRACT
The chapter presents the various physical and general measures used against whiteflies. Physical measures were the main weapon to mitigate insect pests problems earlier, when organic pesticides had not been developed. These measures have been developed and used against the locust, and many others. There is no substitute for such measures until today. Due to the ill-effects of pesticides such as resistance to pesticides in insect pests, the resurgence of secondary pests, pesticide residues problems, etc., once again these measures gained momentum, after being neglected. This chapter also details the machines which have been introduced to tackle the insect pests. Of these machines, the vacuum machines have been manufactured and used to manage soft-bodied insects like sucking insect pests in glasshouses. With the success of vacuums, electrostatic sweepers have been developed to mass-trap the adult whiteflies in the open field crops. Beside these, other measures like blasting with water and the removal of leaves carrying the large population of immatures of whiteflies are also important to reduce the population of whiteflies. Yellow sticky traps have been in use since time immemorial and there is no substitute for this highly successful measures so far. They are mainly used for monitoring and surveillance and are the best option today to trap out a population of whiteflies. While they had initially been meant for monitoring sucking pests in the glasshouses, now they are been exploited for monitoring whiteflies in the open field. The chapter further mentions physical measures like the use of mulches and the cultivation of crops in isolation/screenhouses. These measures are very effective against whiteflies. Popularize nonchemical methods such as the release of parasitoids have also been discussed. However, this chapter mentions that to popularize these nonchemical approaches, there is a need to further refine these measures.
