Publications

Intercropping is one of the important cultural practices in pest management and is based on theprinciple of reducing insect pests by increasing the diversity of an ecosystem. Because there is no biodiversityto mitigate these effects, the insect pests can easily obtain food and multiply, which leads to the infestation ofentire monoculture. In order to deal with the infestations, more insecticides are used to control the pestpopulations. These insecticides have tremendous effects on environment, biodiversity, human and animalhealth. These negative impacts of insecticides have provoked growing interest in the adoption of multi-functionagricultural biodiversity that promote pest management. One of the agro-biodiversity strategies that improvethe sustainability of crop production along with pest management is intercropping. Intercropping producesthe benefits of on-farm diversity, increased productivity, resource distribution balance, farm riskreduction, weed and insect pest control. There are indications that intercrops may add additional income to thefarmers apart from reducing the loss by pests through produce of intercrops. Intercrop not only helps in pestmanagement but also plays a vital role in weed management, disease management, and nematodemanagement besides conserving the biodiversity. As a result, this paper concluded that, it can be rightlyfitted in the integrated crop management for the improvement of farming community.