Deepwater Rice - Rodents |
A pest which can cause serious losses of deepwater rice is the Lesser Bandicoot Rat - Bandicota bengalensis. In a collaboration which I actively encouraged, a BRRI scientist M. Syed Ahmed, pursued investigations in the impact of Bandicoot rats on DWR at the project field sites. This he has published but one significant finding was that damage was usually close to the nest sites (i.e. in banks as shown below) and, thus, the impact on the crop as normally grown in the large open beels was not likely to be very high. Given the small size of individual farmer's fields, however, this could still have an important impact on farmers with fields close to the edges of the beels.
| In 1981 the insecticide trial we carried out in a deepwater tank at BRRI was seriously affected by the feeding of Bandicoot rats
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These had their burrows in the walls of the tanks
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| A specimen of Bandicoot rat
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DWR panicles removed from a Bandicoot rat burrow
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| ©2000 - Brian Taylor CBiol FIBiol
FRES 11, Grazingfield, Wilford, Nottingham, NG11 7FN, U.K. Visiting Academic in the Department of Life Science, University of Nottingham |
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