author(s)
Srinivas Rao N, Anusha B, Narasimha Rao CH V and Tripathi RS

abstract
Rodenticide poison baiting is the most popular and preferred choice of rodent control in crop fields and urban dwellings as well. Second generation anticoagulants, flocoumafen and difenacoum were evaluated against lesser bandicoot, Bandicota bengalensis under choice and no-choice conditions in the laboratory. Both the rodenticides including bromadiolone has recorded 100% mortality in the test animal @0.005% concentration, but with varied time mortality periods of 3.8±0.24 and 4.6±0.25, respectively as against 5.5+0.56 in bromadiolone. In bi-choice laboratory tests, the mean daily intake of plain bait and poison bait was near similar with no significant difference. But, once the animal is ingested with anticoagulant poison bait during the 24 hr of test feeding period in no-choice condition, later its plain bait consumption was drastically reduced compared to its consumption before the test period. Flocoumafen has offered 71.3 and 62.8 per cent reduction in live burrows and tiller damage of B. bengalensis in rice, where as it was 61.9 and 51.7 per cent with difenacoum and 57.2 and 51.1 per cent with bromadiolone during first season field trials. Similar trend was noticed in the performance of new rodenticides during 2^nd season also. Flocoumafen found highly effective and significantly superior in containing the live burrow counts and tiller damage caused by B. bengalensis in rice.