| Abstract | A survey of 106 rice farmers in three villages of Shwe Bo Township, Myanmar, was carried out in October 2015, aimed to assess the farmers’ knowledge, attitudes, and practices of rice crop insect pest management. Farmers’ major pest problems in our study were stemborer and brown planthopper. Among control practices used by farmers in the survey area, pesticide use was the prominent control measure [96.8% (30) of small, 91.4% (32) of medium and 92.5% (37) of large farmers]. The common used insecticides were acephate, chlorpyrifos, chlorantoniliprole, cartap, cypermethrin lambdacyhalothrins, thiamethoxam and beta cypermethrin and profenofos. The chlorantoniliprole was the most commonly used insecticide. Some cultural control practices such as hand picking, water management, burning of straw and stubble after harvest, rouging of infested plants, light trap and gypsum application as basal were used by a few respondents. In solving pest problems, the agronomic practices used by farmers could also be important. In fertilizer management, the farmers (29% of small farmers, 31.4% of medium farmers and 50% of large farmers) knew high amount of urea fertilizer can increase pest population and reproduction rate. Only a few respondents (3.2% of small farmers and 2.5% of large farmers) knew potash can increase the resistance of rice crop to insect pest. About one-fourth of farmers from each group used flooding for 4 days at 55 DAS to control the stemborer, rodent and brown planthopper. Nearly two-third of farmers from each group used drainage for 4days at 60DAS to control the brown planthopper, stemborer, rodent and whitebacked planthopper. Most of the farmers in our study knew crop rotation can reduce pest infestation and increase soil fertility. There was no significant difference in information sources in getting pest control advice among farmers. Almost all of the farmers in the survey area got pest control advice from their neighbor farmers. Moreover, farmers’ knowledge and attitude on pest management might be also important for making effective control measures. Farmers’ knowledge on function of natural enemies showed a highly significant difference (P < 0.01) among small, medium and large farmers. More large farmers (86.8%) were well aware of natural enemies’ feeding on their insects than medium farmers (52.9%) and small farmers (45.2%). Besides, more large farmers knew the ill effects of pesticides on the natural enemies than small and medium farmers. This might be due to less awareness and knowledge of small and medium farmers than large farmers. Small farmers (48.4%), medium farmers (57.1%) and large farmers (37.5%) believed that leaf-feeding insect would not cause yield losses. In contrast, more small farmers (74.2%) believed that chemical control for leaf-feeding insects had to be done early in the crop season than medium farmers (68.6%) and large farmers (65%). Knowledge and attitude of farmers on pest management might be used as a foundation for adaptive research and extension. To sum up, the key policy implication of our study could be to access the farmers’ need by agricultural extension services, in order to obtain new knowledge on insect pest management problems and production practices of rice. |