ABSTRACT
Agricultural production across the globe has been highly affected by the ravages of pests and diseases. Due to the overuse of synthetic pesticides and its ill effects on the ecosystem, safe and sustainable methods of pest management are warranted. Integrated Pest Management (IPM) considered the use of biological control agents as the safest method to suppress the population of insect pests in agroecosystems and in protected cultivation. Biological control involves the use of living organisms to maintain pest populations below damaging levels and the enemies of arthropods fall into three major categories viz., predators, parasitoids, and pathogens. Among them, Parasitoids represent a group of insects that do not usually kill their host directly, but the adults lay their eggs in, on, or near their host insects. When the eggs hatch, the immature stages use the host as food, and eventually, it kills the host during the course of its development. The majority of the parasitoids are very small wasps and belong to the insect order Hymenoptera, where the ichnuemonids, braconids and many other parasitoid wasps are highly specialised for a parasitoidal way of life. But, some other efficient parasitoids also belong to the orders, viz.Diptera, Coleoptera, Lepidoptera and Neuroptera. This chapter gives an insight into the under-exploited insect parasitods present in the various families under the above-mentioned insect orders and their prospects in successful biocontrol programmes.
