Abstract

Sorghum is a security crop widely grown in arid and semi-arid ecologies. Nigeria produces 30 to 40% of Africa’s sorghum. Sorghum in Nigeria is mostly produced and stored by rural farmers at the farm/village level after harvest. The prominent storage structures existing in rural areas in northern Nigeria are the mud rhumbus, thatched rhumbus and underground pits. During storage, different species of insect pests such as Sitophilus granarius (L.), Sitophilus oryzae (L.), Sitophilus zeamais (Motsch.), Rhyzopertha dominica (F.), Oryzaephilus surinamensis (L.), Trogoderma granarium (Ev.), Tribolium castaneum (Herbst), Sitotroga cerealella (Oliv.) and Cryptolestes ferrugineus (Stephens) were observed to cause serious damage to sorghum. The insect pests were reported to cause up to 13.12% weight loss of threshed sorghum and 8.34% weight loss to the unthreshed sorghum. Citrus sinensis L., Euphorbia balsamifera L., Lawsonia inermis L., Leptidania hastata L., Cymbopogon nardus and Ocimum basilicum are some of the plant species tested in the laboratory against S. zeamais and T. castaneum in sorghum. This paper aims to review some of the available literature on the management of insect pests of stored sorghum in Nigerian on-farm traditional granaries using some botanicals as a contribution to the components of integrated pest management (IPM).

Key words: Botanicals, insect pests, management, sorghum, traditional storage.