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Abstract
Integrated pest management (IPM) involves the selection, integration and implementation of strategies/methods to control pest populations taking into consideration their ecological, economic and sociological consequences. It involves maximum use of natural agents like weather, disease causing organisms, parasites, predators, etc. With the expansion of knowledge of chemical communication system, the complexity of the subject has also grown exponentially and so has the terminologies changed. Although pheromonal compounds have been successfully employed in various IPM systems, most end-users and even the applied researchers do not appreciate how much efforts go into the identification and optimization of pheromonal blends to make them highly species-specific and be attractive to various target species. But, a lot remains to be done in the direction of acceptance of these new and emerging technologies among the growers as well as various government agencies. Understandably, a lot of challenges remain in the road of these pheromones becoming widely employed in various insect IPM programmes, but there is optimism given the pace and rate at which new insights have emerged into their application, mode and mechanisms, and the innovations that have resulted because of intense research in this direction in the last several decades.