Mosquito trap

Something Cuddalore needs very badly at the moment.

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A ‘trap’ to prevent mosquito breeding - The Hindu

Shastry V. Mallady

— Photo: K. Ganesan

The ‘trap’ will be of great use in rubber plantations.

MADURAI: A simple ‘trap’ to prevent breeding of mosquitoes, designed at the Centre for Research in Medical Entomology (CRME) here, a laboratory under the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), is getting ready to be patented.

An anti-breeding trap with easy to handle mechanical design would be of great use, particularly in rubber plantations of Kerala, where the breeding of Aedes albopictus mosquito is the root cause of dengue, according to CRME entomologists.

“This mosquito is a transmitter of vector-borne diseases like dengue. It breeds in rubber plantations and then becomes disease carrier. So, we have come out with a simple solution to a major problem,” B.K. Tyagi, Officer in-charge, CRME, told The Hindu here on Thursday.

The anti-Aedes albopictus breeding trap would be put on rubber collection cups in plantations. It would be able to prevent breeding because of the “simple engineering work” done with regard to the mesh, netting, slider and gauge. The cost of this trap would be just around Rs.100 and materials used by the CRME would be familiar to plantation workers. “We have experimented with the trap locally and found that mosquito breeding did not occur in places where it was tested,” he said. Documentary evidence was sent to the ICMR requesting to initiate the process for getting a patent.