What is Integrated Pest Management (IPM)?

Integrated Pest Management (IPM) is an ecosystem-based crop protection strategy that combines cultural, mechanical, biological and — only where necessary — chemical control measures, so that pest populations are kept below the Economic Threshold Level (ETL) with minimum disruption to natural enemies, human health and the environment. In India IPM is promoted as national plant-protection policy by the Directorate of Plant Protection, Quarantine & Storage (DPPQS) and the National Institute of Plant Health Management (NIPHM), and is delivered through the Central Integrated Pest Management Centres (CIPMC) network and the Farmer Field School (FFS) methodology.

What is an Economic Threshold Level (ETL)?

The Economic Threshold Level (ETL) is the pest density at which control action must be taken to prevent the pest population from reaching the Economic Injury Level (EIL) — the density at which the cost of yield loss exceeds the cost of control. ICAR-NCIPM and the crop-based ICAR institutes publish crop-and-region-specific ETLs — for example, 1 egg mass per m² for Yellow Stem Borer in rice, 8% damaged squares for Pink Bollworm in cotton, 10% infested plants for Fall Armyworm in maize at whorl stage. Scouting against a documented ETL is the single most important discipline that separates IPM from calendar spraying.

Which are the main biological control agents used in Indian IPM packages?

The core bio-control agents mass-produced at the ICAR-NBAIR referral centre and CIPMC laboratories include the egg parasitoids Trichogramma chilonis (for stem borers in rice, sugarcane and maize) and Trichogramma pretiosum (for Fall Armyworm and Helicoverpa), the predator Chrysoperla zastrowi sillemi (for aphids and whitefly), Nucleopolyhedrovirus (NPV) formulations for Helicoverpa armigera and Spodoptera litura, and antagonistic fungi and bacteria — Trichoderma viride / harzianum for soil-borne pathogens, Metarhizium anisopliae and Beauveria bassiana for sucking pests, and Pseudomonas fluorescens for bacterial diseases. Pheromone traps (gossyplure, scirpolure, TLM lure and FAW lure) provide the accompanying monitoring layer.

What is a Farmer Field School (FFS)?

A Farmer Field School (FFS) is a season-long, field-based, learning-by-doing methodology developed by FAO in Southeast Asia in the late 1980s and adapted for India by NIPHM. A group of about 25–30 farmers meets weekly on a designated learning plot for the full crop cycle, conducts Agro-Ecosystem Analysis (AESA), identifies pests and natural enemies, discusses ETL and takes group decisions on action — building both an IPM skill-set and the confidence to reduce blanket pesticide use. FFS is the primary delivery mechanism for IPM under CIPMCs and, more recently, under the Community-Managed Sustainable Agriculture (CMSA) and National Mission on Natural Farming (NMNF) programmes.

Is IPM the same as organic farming?

No. Organic farming, as certified under NPOP (National Programme for Organic Production) or under the PGS-India framework used by PKVY and NMNF, prohibits synthetic pesticides and fertilisers altogether. IPM does not prohibit synthetic pesticides — it treats them as one tool in the toolbox and applies them only when scouting shows the pest has crossed the ETL and non-chemical options are inadequate. In practice a well-run IPM programme dramatically reduces pesticide use, and many organic-farming packages of practice draw directly on IPM's biological-control and cultural-control components.

How does India regulate the pesticides used in IPM?

Pesticides used in India are regulated under the Insecticides Act, 1968 and the Insecticides Rules, 1971, administered by the Central Insecticides Board & Registration Committee (CIBRC) under DA&FW. CIBRC registers active ingredients and formulations, notifies label claims (crop-pest combinations for which a product is approved) and periodically reviews and restricts products with unacceptable human-health or environmental profiles. IPM packages published by ICAR-NCIPM and NIPHM only recommend label-approved products at the CIBRC-notified doses, and require adherence to the pre-harvest interval (PHI) printed on the label.

Integrated Pest Management (IPM) in India — Principles, ETL, Bio-Control Agents & Farmer Field School Delivery

Integrated Pest Management (IPM) is the national plant-protection policy of India — an ecosystem-based approach that keeps pest populations below the Economic Threshold Level (ETL) through a coordinated stack of cultural, mechanical, biological and, only where necessary, chemical measures. Its promoters in India are the Directorate of Plant Protection, Quarantine & Storage (DPPQS) under the Department of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare (DA&FW), the National Institute of Plant Health Management (NIPHM) at Rajendranagar, Hyderabad, ICAR-NCIPM (New Delhi) and ICAR-NBAIR (Bengaluru), delivered on the ground through the Central Integrated Pest Management Centres (CIPMC) network and the Farmer Field School (FFS) methodology.

Origins and the shift from calendar spraying

Modern IPM was crystallised in the influential 1959 paper by Stern, Smith, van den Bosch and Hagen (University of California, Berkeley) that defined the integrated control concept and the Economic Injury Level. FAO formalised the term Integrated Pest Management in the late 1960s. India institutionalised IPM in the mid-1980s: the Directorate of Plant Protection set up the first Central Integrated Pest Management Centres in 1974–75, and NIPHM (originally NPPTI, founded 1966) was upgraded in 2008 to lead national capacity building on IPM, plant biosecurity and pesticide management.

The policy shift IPM enforces — away from prophylactic calendar spraying of insecticides and towards scouting-and-threshold-based need-based application — was the response to the classic pesticide treadmill: rising resistance in target pests, resurgence of secondary pests after natural enemies were destroyed, human-health costs and rising input expenditure without commensurate yield gain. The Green Revolution's intensification amplified all four problems, and the emergence of pink bollworm resistance in Bt cotton and the arrival of invasive pests such as Tuta absoluta (2014) and Fall Armyworm (2018) has renewed IPM's policy salience.

The five pillars of the Indian IPM framework

Cultural control

Manipulating agronomy so that the crop escapes the pest or the pest cannot build up: adjusted sowing date to escape peak insect flight (e.g. early sowing of rabi mustard to escape aphid), resistant / tolerant varieties (Bt cotton for bollworm, gall-midge-resistant rice, wheat-rust-resistant wheat), crop rotation and trap-cropping (marigold border in tomato for nematodes, castor as trap crop for Spodoptera in groundnut), balanced fertilisation from a Soil Health Card recommendation, weed management and clean cultivation.

Mechanical & physical control

Hand-picking of egg masses and larvae in early infestations, installation of light traps (1/ha) and yellow / blue sticky traps (10–20/ha for sucking pests), pheromone traps for monitoring and mass trapping (5/ha as monitoring, up to 25/ha as mass trapping for pests like Tuta absoluta), bird perches in rice for larvivorous birds, ploughing and solarisation of nursery beds and rogueing of virus-infected plants.

Biological control

Conservation and augmentation of natural enemies through parasitoid releases (Trichogramma cards at 1.5 lakh/ha, 6 releases at weekly intervals for stem borers in rice and sugarcane), predator releases (Chrysoperla for aphids and whitefly), microbial bio-pesticides (Bt kurstaki for lepidopteran caterpillars, NPV for Helicoverpa and Spodoptera, Trichoderma for soil-borne pathogens, Pseudomonas for bacterial diseases), and habitat management (flowering border strips such as sunflower and coriander to support natural-enemy populations).

Chemical control (need-based)

Only when ETL is crossed and non-chemical options are inadequate — select a CIBRC-label-approved insecticide of a different mode-of-action (IRAC group) from the last spray to slow resistance, apply the correct dose with calibrated equipment, observe the pre-harvest interval (PHI) on the label, and follow personal-protective-equipment (PPE) guidance published under DPPQS and NIPHM's Plant Health Engineering Division. Prophylactic calendar spraying is explicitly discouraged in every ICAR-NCIPM crop package.

Regulatory & seed-quality control

Plant quarantine at ports and airports under the Plant Quarantine (Regulation of Import into India) Order, 2003 to keep out invasive pests such as Tuta absoluta and Fall Armyworm (both of which nonetheless established themselves after the mid-2010s); certified seed from state seed corporations and NSC, and seed treatment with Trichoderma, Pseudomonas or approved fungicides / insecticides at recommended dose to break seed-borne disease and early-season sucker-pest cycles.

ETL discipline — the scouting-first principle

Every crop-wise IPM package published by ICAR-NCIPM opens with a scouting protocol and a table of Economic Threshold Levels — the pest density at which control action must be taken to prevent the pest population from reaching the Economic Injury Level (the density at which cost of yield loss exceeds cost of control). Illustrative published ETLs used in FFS training include:

Yellow Stem Borer (rice): 1 egg mass/m² or 10% dead-hearts at vegetative stage, or 5% white-ears at reproductive stage (ICAR-IIRR).
Brown Planthopper (rice): 5–10 insects/hill at tillering, reduced to a stricter threshold in hybrids and susceptible varieties (ICAR-IIRR).
Pink Bollworm (cotton): 8% damaged squares or 8 moths/trap for 3 consecutive nights on gossyplure pheromone traps (ICAR-CICR / NCIPM).
Fall Armyworm (maize): 5% egg-mass incidence or 10% whorl-damaged plants at early whorl (ICAR-NBAIR / NCIPM).
Helicoverpa armigera (chickpea, pigeonpea, cotton): 1 larva/m row at flowering, or 8 moths/pheromone trap for 3 consecutive nights (ICAR-NCIPM).

Scouting for ETL is combined with weekly Agro-Ecosystem Analysis (AESA) in a Farmer Field School — recording pest counts, natural-enemy counts (Coccinellids, spiders, Chrysoperla larvae, egg-parasitoid presence), weather notes and crop stage on a drawing pad — so that a group decision can be made on whether the natural-enemy population is already suppressing the pest adequately.

Crop-wise IPM packages — worked examples

Rice (paddy)

Key pests — Yellow Stem Borer, Brown Planthopper, Gall Midge, Leaf Folder; key diseases — blast, sheath blight, bacterial leaf blight. IPM: resistant varieties (TN-1 replacement lines, IR-64 derivatives, IR-36 for BPH), avoid excess N, alternate wetting-and-drying to reduce BPH, pheromone (scirpolure) traps at 5/ha, Trichogramma japonicum releases for YSB, need-based spray only above ETL (1 egg mass/m² or 10% dead-hearts for YSB). Reference: ICAR-IIRR Hyderabad package of practices.

Cotton

Key pests — Pink Bollworm (resurgent in Bt cotton), whitefly, jassids, thrips, pink mealybug. IPM: strict adherence to sowing window and refuge, gossyplure pheromone traps at 5/ha for monitoring and up to 25/ha for mass trapping, timely terminal-flowering surveys, destruction of unopened bolls and stalks after harvest to break the pink bollworm carry-over, need-based spray of CIBRC-approved insecticides in rotation of IRAC groups. Reference: ICAR-CICR Nagpur and NCIPM cotton IPM package.

Maize

Key pests since 2018 — Fall Armyworm (Spodoptera frugiperda), stem borer. IPM per ICAR-NBAIR / NCIPM advisory: intercropping with pulses or oilseeds, weekly egg-mass and whorl scouting, FAW pheromone traps at 5/ha, mass release of Trichogramma pretiosum at 50,000/ha at weekly intervals from 7 DAE, conservation of native predators (Coccinellids, Chrysoperla), Bt kurstaki or NPV whorl application in early infestation, and need-based spray only above 10% whorl damage.

Tomato & horticultural crops

Invasive Tuta absoluta (South American Tomato Leaf-Miner) since 2014, mite and thrips complex, fruit borer. IPM per ICAR-IIHR Bengaluru: TLM pheromone water traps at 25/ha for mass trapping, yellow sticky traps for whitefly and leaf-miner adults, removal and destruction of infested leaflets, Trichogramma achaeae releases, biopesticides (NPV, Beauveria, Metarhizium) and need-based spray in strict IRAC-group rotation to slow resistance in this fast-cycling pest.

Full crop-wise packages for over 80 crops are published by ICAR-NCIPM and by the commodity-specific ICAR institutes; state agriculture departments adapt them to agro-climatic zones and district-specific pest complexes with KVK support. Our pest & disease identification field guide is the farmer-facing quick reference to the symptoms and monitoring notes summarised here.

Delivery: NIPHM, CIPMCs and the Farmer Field School

National capacity-building on IPM is the mandate of NIPHM — training state plant-protection officers, pesticide inspectors, extension officers and Farmer Field School master trainers, and running the Plant Health Engineering, Plant Biosecurity, Pesticide Management, IPM and Agricultural Extension divisions.

Field delivery runs through the Central Integrated Pest Management Centres (CIPMCs) — a network of around 35 field stations across states operating under DPPQS. Each CIPMC runs a bio-control laboratory that mass-produces Trichogramma cards, Chrysoperla and Trichoderma, conducts pest surveillance, issues location-specific IPM advisories, and organises Farmer Field Schools jointly with the state agriculture department and the local Krishi Vigyan Kendra. The FFS methodology — 25–30 farmers meeting weekly on a learning plot through the full crop cycle, running AESA and taking group decisions on ETL-based action — was developed by FAO in Southeast Asia in the late 1980s and adapted for Indian conditions by NIPHM, which now certifies FFS master trainers used by CIPMCs, KVKs and state schemes.

Regulation: the Insecticides Act and CIBRC

Every pesticide sold in India is registered under the Insecticides Act, 1968 and the Insecticides Rules, 1971 by the Central Insecticides Board & Registration Committee (CIBRC)under DA&FW. CIBRC notifies the label claim (crop-pest combinations for which a product is approved), the recommended dose, the pre-harvest interval (PHI) and any use restrictions. It also periodically reviews and restricts or bans products with unacceptable human-health or environmental profiles — for example the phase-out of monocrotophos in specific crops and the review of glyphosate use published in the Gazette of India in 2022. IPM packages recommend only label-approved products at CIBRC doses and insist on rotation of Insecticide Resistance Action Committee (IRAC) modes-of-action groups to slow resistance.

Pesticide-application safety — nozzle selection, spray-equipment calibration, PPE and drift management, including drone-based application under the Namo Drone Didiprogramme — is trained at NIPHM's Plant Health Engineering Division and is a mandatory component of the FFS curriculum.

Policy programmes IPM connects to

National Mission on Natural Farming (NMNF) — see our NMNF guide. IPM's cultural- and biological-control components sit at the core of natural-farming packages of practice, and the CMSA / FFS lineage NIPHM anchored is the direct programmatic ancestor of NMNF delivery.
Paramparagat Krishi Vikas Yojana (PKVY) — see our PKVY guide. Cluster-based organic farming under the PGS-India framework uses IPM's biocontrol stack (Trichogramma, Trichoderma, Pseudomonas, NPV) as the sanctioned plant-protection toolkit.
Sub-Mission on Agricultural Extension (ATMA) — see our ATMA guide. Block-level ATMA plans schedule FFS, demonstrations of biocontrol releases and pesticide-safety training in partnership with CIPMCs and KVKs.
Crop residue management — see our crop residue guide. Non-burning residue management with Happy Seeder / Super Seeder / Pusa Bio-Decomposer is itself a cultural-control measure for stubble-borne pests, most notably Pink Bollworm in cotton and Yellow Stem Borer in paddy.
Soil Health Card — see our soil health guide. Balanced fertilisation from the SHC recommendation avoids the excess-nitrogen conditions that favour sucking pests and blast in rice, making INM a first-order cultural control input.

How this connects to other planning on this site

Pair scouting with sowing and critical-growth windows from our India crop calendar — the timing of pheromone-trap installation, Trichogramma releases and AESA rounds is set by crop stage, not calendar week. Use our pest identification field guide to confirm the symptom before deciding whether the scouting count has crossed the ETL. Locate the nearest CIPMC and Farmer Field School via your district KVK, which co-hosts most FFS sessions with the state agriculture department.

NIPHM

National Institute of Plant Health Management, Hyderabad — trains the state officers and FFS master trainers who deliver IPM on the ground.

Pest & disease identification

Field-ready quick reference to major Indian crop pests and diseases — the symptom-recognition companion to this IPM framework.

Crop calendar

Sowing and critical-growth windows for major Indian crops — the timing base for pheromone-trap installation and biocontrol releases.

Soil Health Card

Balanced fertilisation is a first-order cultural control — excess nitrogen favours sucking pests and blast in rice.

NMNF

National Mission on Natural Farming — the current national programme that builds on the CMSA / FFS lineage anchored by NIPHM.

Crop residue management

Non-burning stubble management is a cultural control for Pink Bollworm in cotton and Yellow Stem Borer in paddy.

References

NIPHM (niphm.gov.in) — National Institute of Plant Health Management, Hyderabad: IPM curriculum, FFS methodology and biocontrol production protocols.
ICAR-NCIPM — National Centre for Integrated Pest Management, New Delhi: crop-wise IPM packages, ETL tables and pest surveillance.
ICAR-NBAIR — National Bureau of Agricultural Insect Resources, Bengaluru: insect biosystematics, biocontrol-agent taxonomy and invasive-species advisories.
DPPQS (ppqs.gov.in) — Directorate of Plant Protection, Quarantine & Storage: CIPMC network, Plant Quarantine and national pesticide-use advisories.
CIBRC (cibrc.gov.in) — Central Insecticides Board & Registration Committee: registered products, label claims and Gazette notifications on restrictions.
FAO IPPM — FAO's Integrated Production and Pest Management programme: the origin of the Farmer Field School methodology adopted in India.

Frequently asked questions

What is Integrated Pest Management (IPM)?: Integrated Pest Management (IPM) is an ecosystem-based crop protection strategy that combines cultural, mechanical, biological and — only where necessary — chemical control measures, so that pest populations are kept below the Economic Threshold Level (ETL) with minimum disruption to natural enemies, human health and the environment. In India IPM is promoted as national plant-protection policy by the Directorate of Plant Protection, Quarantine & Storage (DPPQS) and the National Institute of Plant Health Management (NIPHM), and is delivered through the Central Integrated Pest Management Centres (CIPMC) network and the Farmer Field School (FFS) methodology.
What is an Economic Threshold Level (ETL)?: The Economic Threshold Level (ETL) is the pest density at which control action must be taken to prevent the pest population from reaching the Economic Injury Level (EIL) — the density at which the cost of yield loss exceeds the cost of control. ICAR-NCIPM and the crop-based ICAR institutes publish crop-and-region-specific ETLs — for example, 1 egg mass per m² for Yellow Stem Borer in rice, 8% damaged squares for Pink Bollworm in cotton, 10% infested plants for Fall Armyworm in maize at whorl stage. Scouting against a documented ETL is the single most important discipline that separates IPM from calendar spraying.
Which are the main biological control agents used in Indian IPM packages?: The core bio-control agents mass-produced at the ICAR-NBAIR referral centre and CIPMC laboratories include the egg parasitoids Trichogramma chilonis (for stem borers in rice, sugarcane and maize) and Trichogramma pretiosum (for Fall Armyworm and Helicoverpa), the predator Chrysoperla zastrowi sillemi (for aphids and whitefly), Nucleopolyhedrovirus (NPV) formulations for Helicoverpa armigera and Spodoptera litura, and antagonistic fungi and bacteria — Trichoderma viride / harzianum for soil-borne pathogens, Metarhizium anisopliae and Beauveria bassiana for sucking pests, and Pseudomonas fluorescens for bacterial diseases. Pheromone traps (gossyplure, scirpolure, TLM lure and FAW lure) provide the accompanying monitoring layer.
What is a Farmer Field School (FFS)?: A Farmer Field School (FFS) is a season-long, field-based, learning-by-doing methodology developed by FAO in Southeast Asia in the late 1980s and adapted for India by NIPHM. A group of about 25–30 farmers meets weekly on a designated learning plot for the full crop cycle, conducts Agro-Ecosystem Analysis (AESA), identifies pests and natural enemies, discusses ETL and takes group decisions on action — building both an IPM skill-set and the confidence to reduce blanket pesticide use. FFS is the primary delivery mechanism for IPM under CIPMCs and, more recently, under the Community-Managed Sustainable Agriculture (CMSA) and National Mission on Natural Farming (NMNF) programmes.
Is IPM the same as organic farming?: No. Organic farming, as certified under NPOP (National Programme for Organic Production) or under the PGS-India framework used by PKVY and NMNF, prohibits synthetic pesticides and fertilisers altogether. IPM does not prohibit synthetic pesticides — it treats them as one tool in the toolbox and applies them only when scouting shows the pest has crossed the ETL and non-chemical options are inadequate. In practice a well-run IPM programme dramatically reduces pesticide use, and many organic-farming packages of practice draw directly on IPM's biological-control and cultural-control components.
How does India regulate the pesticides used in IPM?: Pesticides used in India are regulated under the Insecticides Act, 1968 and the Insecticides Rules, 1971, administered by the Central Insecticides Board & Registration Committee (CIBRC) under DA&FW. CIBRC registers active ingredients and formulations, notifies label claims (crop-pest combinations for which a product is approved) and periodically reviews and restricts products with unacceptable human-health or environmental profiles. IPM packages published by ICAR-NCIPM and NIPHM only recommend label-approved products at the CIBRC-notified doses, and require adherence to the pre-harvest interval (PHI) printed on the label.

ETL values, biocontrol release rates and crop-wise IPM packages here are drawn from published advisories of ICAR-NCIPM, ICAR-NBAIR, ICAR-IIRR, ICAR-CICR, ICAR-IIHR and NIPHM. State-level and district-level cut-offs vary; farmers should confirm the ETL, recommended biocontrol agent and any label-approved insecticide with their local KVK or CIPMC before action.