Optimizing Habitat Management to Boost Beneficial Insect Populations for Effective Rice Pest Control

Abstract

Simple Summary Rice production is severely affected by insect pests such as planthoppers, stem borers, leafhoppers, and gall midges, which cause major yield losses worldwide. Beneficial insects and other natural enemies, including spiders, ladybird beetles, dragonflies, damselflies, and parasitoid wasps, play a key role in suppressing these pests and reducing reliance on chemical insecticides. This review highlights how habitat management and ecological engineering can strengthen biological control in rice ecosystems. Practices such as maintaining non-crop vegetation, flower strips, banker plants, cover crops, and shelter habitats provide food, alternative hosts, and refuges that enhance the abundance and effectiveness of natural enemies. Increasing biodiversity and landscape heterogeneity generally improves pest suppression, lowers pesticide use, and supports sustainable rice production. Several case studies demonstrate that ecological engineering and conservation biological control can successfully reduce populations of major rice pests, particularly brown planthoppers and stem borers. Overall, the review concludes that habitat management and ecological engineering are essential components of IPM. By conserving and enhancing beneficial insects, these approaches offer environmentally friendly, sustainable solutions to improve rice productivity while reducing reliance on synthetic pesticides. Finally, we outline technical recommendations and future research trajectories to facilitate the integration of habitat manipulation into standard rice integrated pest management frameworks globally.