Cowpea is plagued by many different pests, with insects causing the worst damage. In the field, insect pests reduce cowpea grain yields greatly. In the storage granary, a different set of pests takes a high toll. An approach to reducing these losses has evolved over the years. It is called Integrated Pest Management (IPM). The fundamental aim of IPM is to prevent unacceptable losses to pests while minimizing the use of chemical insecticides. The IPM approach was developed, at least partly, because of a historical pattern of overuse of insecticides. Continued use of an insecticide eventually causes the targeted insect population to become resistant. There are several features of an IPM program. Knowledge of the insect pest is essential, its life history and ecology, as is knowledge of the crop it lives on - in our case cowpea. Knowing the levels of insects that cause significant damage, the economic injury threshold, allows appropriate action to be taken. Monitoring of the pest insect populations is another requirement - knowing the pest population levels makes it possible for the grower to intervene when it is necessary and useful to do so, and not to intervene when it is unnecessary. This saves labor, time and materials, and reduces insecticide use. When control measures are necessary, a variety of options may be used. These may be cultural actions such as picking insects from the plants, the use of natural enemies like predators or parasitoids of the pest insect, or the use of chemical or botanical insecticides. Other actions of the grower can reduce the insect problem below the economic threshold - actions just may be taken well before a serious insect problem develops. The grower can plant cultivars that are genetically resistant to the insect, or plant in intercrop culture (which in some cases decreases insect pest levels), or plant later in the season or earlier in the season. In short, there are many action measures that are integrated together for pest management, hence IPM.
• Storage
• Field
