FARMERS’ AWARENESS ABOUT SPIDER AS NATURAL PREDATOR OF COTTON PESTS AND HAZARDOUS EFFECTS OF PESTICIDES ON THEIR HEALTH FROM THREE DISTRICTS OF PUNJAB COTTON BELT: PAST FINDINGS AND FUTURE PRIORITIES

Spiders are cosmopolitan in nature and being incalculable predators of insect pests, they can reduce pest population upto ETL (economic threshold level). But, use of non-selective pesticides to control different invading pests on cotton, is disrupting their ecological status. To use them as successful bio-control agent, basic knowledge about their ecology and farmers’ awareness regarding their predatory potentials is pre-requisite to conserve their identity. Therefore, present study was conducted to explore the farmers’ awareness about spiders as natural predators of insect pests and: hazardous impacts of pesticides on their health. 75 farmers from each locality were interviewed through well structured questionnaire at open ended discussion for suggestions viz. Faisalabad, Rahim Yar Khan and Multan. After interviewing the farmers, independent variables viz. age, education, size of land holding, type of tenure and experience of agriculture, and cotton sowing were compared with various dependent variables through Chi-square analysis. Level of awareness about spider importance, their predatory role and hazardous impacts of pesticides to human health were recorded significantly correlated with education; other independent variables were recorded least supporting. Majority of respondents were aware about hazardous impacts of pesticides and importance of natural insect predators and among them, spider was utmost. It has been concluded from entire survey that use of pesticides is much dangerous. However, betterment of education standards can improve the situation by creating awareness about importance of spider and can safeguard their life from hazards of pesticides.