Pests of Stored Grains

India’s grain production has steadily increased due to advances in technology, but postharvest loss is constant at 10%. Losses during storage account for around 6% of the total losses as proper storage facilities are not available (Sharon et al. 2014). The postharvest losses in India amount to 12–16 million metric tons of food grains each year, and the monetary value of these losses amounts to more than Rs. 50,000 crores per year (Singh 2010). The losses can broadly be categorized as weight loss due to spoilage, quality loss, nutritional loss, seed viability loss and commercial loss. The population is expected to grow to 9.1 billion people by the year 2050, and about 70% extra food production will be required to feed them (Godfray et al. 2010).