Termite Group

introduction

Termite is a serious pest of agricultural crops as well as buildings in the world. A termite colony may attack a field, an orchard and a building at a time without alarming the farmer working in the field and orchard and residents of the building. Concealed habitat of subterranean termites makes their control difficult. At NIFA we are engaged in developing cost effective and environment friendly IPM techniques for the control of subterranean termites.

Group Composition

Muhammad Misbah ul Haq, SS

aCtivities of the group

Using slow-acting toxicant bait in orchards/buildings for elimination of termite colonies
Exhaustive trapping of termites using NIFA-TERMAP
Delineation of foraging territories of termites
IPM of termites of agricultural importance
Provision of termite control services in farms and residential areas

Other Activities

The group is also invloved in the development of software which are helpful in entomological/agricultural research. The work done so far includes :
Trackmove : a software developed for monitoring the walking behavior of insects and other animals
Research Econolyzer: A software for conducting marginal analysis of research data
Unit Calculator: A utility for conversion of basic and derived units used in agricutural research

slow-acting toxicant bait for termite control

Termites are very sensitive to catastrophes in the colony and if workers start dying then it react by sealing all the galleries to avoid the spread of any invading force but if such toxicants are used which starts their effects after some days then these toxicants can be transferred to the other members of the colony. Before any symptom appears, the poison would transfer to whole colony. This leads to elimination or least a major damage to colony.

Exhaustive trapping of termites using NIFA-TERMAP

Termites are social insects where all the essential activities are carried out by workers. If some how the number of workers is reduced the colony will under go stress which can ultimately eliminate colony. NIFA-TERMAP and modified NIFA-TERMAP do this job by removing millions of termites.