Biodiversity of Some Economically Significant Stored Grain Pests in Jammu, Jammu and Kashmir

Abstract

The stored grain pests infest grains and other pantry items to fulfill their food and shelter requirements leading to both qualitative and quantitative losses. Due to favorable climatic conditions of Jammu, these stored grain insects register their presence throughout the year. These insects destroy and contaminate kitchen commodities with their fecal matter and undesirable odors and make them unpalatable, thus, posing a grave health hazard. Due to this reason, the post-harvest loss in India accounts for about 10% of the total grains and 9.5% of total pulses. The insects were collected randomly from places like super markets, grocery shops, ration depots, godowns, warehouses, etc. and were preserved in fumigated collection boxes using standard entomological procedures. From the study area, 16 insects under two orders namely Coleoptera (81.25%) and Lepidoptera (18.75%) were recorded on Pantry commodities within human dwellings in Jammu from 2017-2018. Of these, 9 insects have been recorded for the first time in the district, all of which belong to order Coleoptera. This is the first ever documentation of insect pests associated with stored grains from the Jammu district. However, this pilot study, which represents miniscule fraction of insect diversity in homes, requires a detailed and full scale investigations from the Jammu district, which is intended to be taken in further studies among these group of insects.