Other Equipments for Plant Protection
a) Rat Fumigation Pump: It is a plunger type of duster with an air pump, a dust chamber of about 500 g capacity and discharge tube.
b) Soil Injector: It is also known as soil gun, which consists of a cylindrical tank for the liquid fumigant, a pump barrel and plunger assembly, injector nozzle, thrust handle and injection handle. The hand operated soil injectors have a capacity of 1 to 3 liters and they can cover about 0.5 ha in a day. They are used to apply liquid nematicides to kill soil nematodes.
c) Granule Applicators: They are used to apply granular formulations of pesticides uniformly. These are two types of granular applicators. 1) There is a plastic hopper 1 liter capacity from which the granules flow by gravity to a nozzle. 2) It is a knapsack type with hopper of 10 liters capacity.
d) Bird Scarer: It is a device to scare away birds and wild animals like jackals by producing noises. It has three essential chambers, a chamber to hold calcium carbide, a smaller chamber placed inside the former to hold water and combustion chamber attached to the main chamber. Water acts with calcium carbide and generates acetylene which explodes producing the noise. The frequency of flow of water into calcium carbide chamber. One kg of calcium carbide is sufficient for working a machine for 24 hours. One bird scarer is sufficient to cover 1 to 2 ha.
e) Rat Traps: Several types of mechanical devices for trapping rats and mice are used in India. In these traps baits like dry fish are used for attracting these rats. The cage type wooden box with a door closing device and spring board types are the more common ones used in the houses.
f) Flame Thrower: It is a compressed air sprayer filled with kerosene oil for producing flames. There is lance, which is fitted with a burner. When the burner is heated the kerosene oil is released and it burns into flames. It is used for burning locust populations.
g) Seed Dresser: It is comprised of a drum rotated with a handle. It is mostly used for seed treatment with insecticides.
Besides these plant protection equipments, pheromone traps are also used in the field for monitoring the pest population. In these, a septa smeared with artificially synthesized pheromones is used for attracting the opposite mates for trapping in the pheromone traps.