Green Chemistry in Agricultural Pest Management Programmes

Agriculture has been extremely crucial for survival of human and associated animals since very long. It is also the basis of economic growth, particularly in the developing countries. Tropicaland subtropical zone act as epicentre of food production because these areasprovide seat for growth of multiple crops annually. Agriculture in tropical and sub-tropical belt is normally associated with attack of several pests due to congenial environmental conditions which sometime leads to tremendous loss of produce, thereby, creating catastrophic condition followed by famine in the concern area. The situation worsens if these incidents appear in an area maximally dependent on agriculture.

Both pre- harvesting and post-harvesting stages are affected by pest but the post-harvest stages are mainly concern with the attack of fungi, insects and rodents. During storage rodents and insects mainly attack seed grains, fungi and bacteria attack variety of substances including both raw and processed food materials. The hot and humid environmentexponentially increases the occurrence frequency of the aforementionedmicrobes. Microbial contamination not only quantitatively deteriorates the stored commodities but sometime they produce secondary metabolite which are extremely harmful. Aflatoxins are few of that kind of mycotoxins secreted Aspergillus flavus and Aspergillus parasiticus. Aflatoxins are reported hepatotoxic, carcinogen and mutagen and causes aflatoxicosis in human being. About 25% of the world crops and 4.5 billion of the world population are facing direct risk of aflatoxin contamination.