Cotton, as a commercial crop has gone through subsistence, ecological, exploitation, crisis and disaster phases of pest management, with insecticides on focus at the later three stages. Restructuring of pest-management strategies during the last few decades under the banner of Integrated Pest Management (IPM) or Insecticide Resistance Management (IRM)continued to give considerable and selective preference respectively, to the insecticides. Such an approach could only achieve the short-term benefits of reducing the pesticide usage and improving the profit accrued by the farmers.

Studies on development and promotion of IPM technology in rainfed, Bt and non-Bt cotton varieties were carried out for four consecutive years (2001-2004) at the two locations at Nawandi and Loha, Nanded in 6th agro-ecological region of India. Sucking pests were 31.4% and 12.2% more in non-IPM than the IPM fields of Bt and non-Bt cotton, respectively.

This study was carried out as an on-farm research for development and validation of IPM module in participatory mode by involving scientists, pesticide industry and farmers.

A pot experiment was conducted to study the toxic effect of nematicides: carbofuran, carbosulfan alone and their combination on soil microbial population and soil respiration with cotton as a test crop. The total bacterial population and free living diazotrophs population was reduced initially by nematicides application.

Losses caused due to different insect pests under field conditions on four transgenic cotton hybrids (RCH 134, RCH 317, MRC 6301 and MRC 6304) were estimated in three districts of Punjab viz. Mansa, Ferozepur and Bathinda.

Studies on the population of key pests and natural enemies in RCH 134 Bt and non-Bt cotton hybrid under sprayed and unsprayed conditions were carried out under intercropped conditions. The cotton crop was intercropped with okra, pigeon pea, castor and cowpea to enhance the population build up of cotton jasid, whitefly, spotted bollworm and coccinellids.

A field trial was conducted during 2007-2008 crop season to study the effect of castor as a trap crop in cotton agroecosystem in relation to major insect pests. The treatments were 5, 10 and 15 rows of Bt cotton interspersed each with 1 row of castor, respectively, sole crop of Bt cotton and castor.