Chemoecological Approaches for Insect Borer Pest Management

A wide range of agricultural, horticultural and forest trees are vulnerable to insect borer pests causing serious loss to the economy. Cryptic nature of the borers causes the infestations to be overlooked until sizeable damage has occurred. Employing chemical or biological control has not yielded desirable results in suppressing these, as interventions hardly reach the target site/insect. However, the hazard of pesticides remains. Understanding the ecological interaction mediated by cues, especially odours between borers and their host will aid in the development of clean and green technologies.