Perceived Effectiveness of Indigenous Technological Knowledge (ITK) of Insect and Vertebrate Pests Management in Eastern Uttar Pradesh, India

Indigenous technological knowledge is considered as a traditional knowledge that inherited from their ancestors, unique to a culture, society and environment. In this article we documented uses of such local knowledge used by the local farmers of seven villages form Varanasi, Deoria and Mirzapur districts of eastern Uttar Pradesh, India for their crop protection. Data were collected from 140 respondents (twenty from each village) and 60 respondents who had visited the institute from these three districts during farmers’ fair and farmers’ training and whole making a total of 200 respondents. The farmers in the study developed notable innovations to control major pests of agricultural and horticultural crops such as use of ashes to control vegetable insect pests; use of onion/garlic bulbs, neem leaves, salt crystals, wheat straw, brick kiln powder etc. to prevent store grain pests of cereals; ash and kerosene mixture to repel the sucking pests of rice at milky stage; well-rotted fish scales against Nilgai (Boselaphus tragocamelus); red chilli pods against bruchids in pulses; salt and turmeric powder mixture against ants; use of neem cake to repel termite and other soil insects etc. The local farmers were following these practices because of easy availability, eco-friendly, easy to handle, do not leave any harmful residue, pose any threat to develop resistance and resurgence of secondary pests, easy to apply and compatible with other pest management techniques and socio-cultural situation of the farmers. © 2016, Zoological Society, Kolkata, India.