Microbial Approaches for Insect Pest Management

This book brings together specialized information on modern aspects of applied microbiology in pest management. In the last few decades, the humans have witnessed major advancements in Life Sciences, as a result several new and powerful tools and techniques have evolved. This has led to great advancements in microbial nutrition, genetics and their application in different fields. In modern era of biotechnology, the microbes have provided solutions to many of the human problems and necessities and thus serve as human and farmers’ friends. The microbes have proved to be successful tools for the pest management. Similarly, there has been much advancement in the field of molecular biology, where many more techniques have evolved which can be helpful in the field of pest management too. Plant resistance, development of transgenic plants, and many more techniques are being considered the panacea to pest problems. On the other hand, there are wide spread concerns of the safety of these microbial and biotechnological interventions with nontarget organisms including humans. While the world stands divided on the ethical issues of these approaches and the many safety concerns, scientists believe that well thought of microbial and biotechnological interventions are probably the only safest ways possible for reducing pest attacks on crops. This is useful read for postgraduate students and teachers, plant protection practioners across the world and also useful for policy planners.

Prof. Omkar, FNASc, has been associated with teaching for about 35 years and research for more than 42 years. He is Former Head, Department of Zoology, University of Lucknow, Lucknow-226007,Former Coordinator, UGC-SAP (DRS-II), DST-FIST, DST-PURSE, Centre of Excellence, Govt. of UP,  programs. He has worked on 10 more  projects of state/central funding agencies. He specializes in Environmental Toxicology and Entomology, with particular reference to the Insect Pest Management .He is also an Associate Editor, International Journal of Tropical Insect Science, Springer Nature and Chief Editor, Journal of Applied Bioscience, besides being President of International Society of Applied Biology.

He is a receipient of several awards, like Saraswati Samman by the Department of Higher Education, Govt. of UP; Prof. T N Ananthakrishanan Foundation Award, Rescholar Award of Excellence in Agricultural Entomlogy by Association of ntomologists, Prof. G. S.Shukla Gold Medal by The Academy of Environmental Biology, Dr. S. Pradhan Memorial Lecture Award by The Devision of Entomology, IARI & The Entomological Society of India, ACCLAIM and Uddeepan awards from University of Lucknow. He is a Fellow of The Entomological Society of India, Zoological Society of India, Society for Biocontrol Advancement and Fellow of The National Academy of Sciences India (FNASc), besides many others. He has 16 books to his credit. He has published 235 Research papers, 10 Reviews, 40 Reviews as Book chapters, 17 Popular Science articles. Prof. Omkar has guided more than TWO dozen Ph. D. students. He has visited the School of Biological Sciences, University of East Anglia (2006) for three months and Department of Zoology, University of South Bohemia and Czech Academy of Sciences, Ceske Budejovice, Czech Republic (May 2016).