xii Prelude
the behaviour and physiology of the red ant, Oecophylla smaragdina. The
team of Mahfuza Khan from Bangladesh have researched on the impact of
added bacteria in adult diets on the ovariole number of the pumpkin fruit fly,
Bactrocera tau. Janardhana Jani and others have given the readers the effects
of metabolites of Psuedomonas sp. on the health of the crop plants. Nowa-
days, Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) transgenic crops are gaining a lot of impor-
tance. Leena Pathak and others have dealt with insect resistance in Bt crops.
The chapters selected on Insect Toxicology have been included in Part. III.
Midgut and whole body extracts of the resistant Cnaphalocrosis medinalis,
a pest on rice, showed differences in esterase-banding pattern with midgut
producing three esterase bands, according to Ramesh Babu and Shashi
Vemuri. Wei Qing Zheng and others from China carried out bioassays of
Rongbao (active ingredients of calcium cyanamide) against housefly mag-
gots. Nanoparticles and nanotechnology are going to be the buzz words in
crop protection in the days to come. Chakravarthy and others showed that
inorganic nanoparticles proved promising against Spodoptera and Helicov-
erpa. Alibabaie and Safaralizadeh from Iran demonstrated fumigant toxicity
of nutmeg seed essential oil on cowpea weevil, Callosobruchus maculatus.
The next important new horizon of insect science is Insect Vectors com-
piled under Part. IV. Kumara and others from Srilanka discussed at length
vectors of coconut leaf wilt disease. Chavan and Nagaraju have comprehen-
sively reviewed the literature on plant viruses in South East Asia.
Molecular science has been the main stay of biologists today. Therefore,
under Part. V, four important chapters on insect molecular science have been
included. Ankit Patel and others have shared their research experience on
molecular approaches for the improvement of B. thuringiensis against crop
pests. Ponnuvel and others have deciphered in depth on diapause-related
gene expression in eggs of Bombyx mori. Asokan and others have com-
prehensively dealt with the role of RNA interference in pest management.
Shashank and coworkers have studied molecular characterization and man-
agement of shoot and fruit borer, Conogethes punctiferalis.
Another interesting, promising and newly emerging branch of Insect Sci-
ence has been the Insect Chemical Ecology. Two interesting chapters on
insect semiochemicals by a team of workers lead by Srinivasan Ramasamy
from AVRDC Taiwan and Kamala Jayanthi from IIHR, Bengaluru have been
included in Part. VI of this book.
In this book, insect science has embraced topics on basic and applied
Entomology. So, included under Part. VII of the book are 15 chapters on
Applied Entomology. Five chapters on host plant resistance as a means to
suppress pest populations in cultivated ecosystems form an important part of
this book. Vijayakumar et al. have elucidated the mechanism of resistance in
rice gall midge. Besides inflicting direct injury to crops, insects also cause
malady to crop plants by infecting disease causing organisms or debilitating
the plant of nutrients. One such interesting case has been reported by Vijaya-
kumar Ghante from Karnataka, South India on Bt cotton hybrids. Saravana-
raman and coworkers have dealt with mutation breeding in shoot webber and
capsule borer, Antigastra catalaunalis of sesamum. Selvanarayanan has ele-
gantly addressed the redesigning research on crop resistance to insect pests.