An experiment was carried out at Maud Tea Estate, Chabua, Assam following the ancient techniques of controlling pests based on information given in Surapala's Vrikshayurveda and Chakrapani Mishra's Vishvavallabha.

Deckiajuli Tea Estate in Assam, India has been grappling with the issue of what should be considered as a ideal crop management system for tea plantation. The planters felt that the use of chemicals was not giving satisfactory results and they decided to grow tea organically. To achieve these objectives, the ancient classics published by the Asian Agri-History Foundation (AAHF), Secunderabad, India were used for obtaining useful and practical information.

Tea (Camellia sinensis) is an important commercial crop extensively cultivated in Assam. Being grown as a monocrop, many insect and mite pests are prevalent in the tea plantations causing considerable crop loss. Use of traditional plant protection measures for pest management in tea has not been considered feasible considering the vastness of the tea plantation. However, Ayangarya (2006) reported that many tea pests could be controlled successfully by adopting such traditional practices based on Vrikshayurveda.

Bamboo has a peculiar phenomenon of flowering. Flowering in bamboo draws attention, as it dies after flowering and is believed to cause famine. Gregarious flowering occurred in 1958, which was followed by the 1959 famine. John and Nadgauda showed that there is a connection between the incidence of bamboo flowering and famine, and that it may not be a myth, but a reality. (Correspondence)

On 5 June 2008, an authorized, small-scale field trial of transgenic potato plants for nematode control was destroyed by people seeking to coerce government and society. It was one of only two trials authorized in the United Kingdom this year. Our concern is that Directive 2001/18/EC, the European Union (EU) legislation that governs such trials, is confused. (Correspondence)

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.