K. M. Arun Kumar

Agricultural pest surveillance is shifting from periodic manual inspection towards digitally mediated observation, combining automated traps, computer vision, environmental sensors and statistical or machine-learning forecasts. The technological literature reports increasingly sophisticated species recognition, remote counting and near-real-time data transmission. Whether these capabilities generate reliable estimates of pest pressure or improve integrated pest management, however, depends on ecological sampling, field validation and decisions taken after an alert. This critical narrative review evaluates the measurement-to-decision pathway rather than treating classification accuracy as evidence of agronomic benefit. Peer-reviewed research and relevant methodological literature were identified through accessible scholarly sources, with thematic emphasis on camera-equipped pheromone, light and adhesive traps; image-recognition architectures; optical, acoustic and environmental sensing; predictive modelling; and operational evaluation. The synthesis indicates that instrumented traps and image-processing methods can reduce some observation burdens and produce useful within-system temporal information. Their reported performance is nevertheless strongly conditioned by trap selectivity, target species, illumination, specimen overlap, annotation quality, seasonal distribution shifts and the choice of validation dataset. Forecasting approaches can exploit temperature, phenology and historical trap catches, but retrospective fit does not establish transferable warning value. Ecological inference also requires distinguishing insect activity, trap catches, abundance, crop injury and economic risk. The most consequential weaknesses are limited independent multi-site prospective testing, incomplete uncertainty reporting, insufficient comparison with manual scouting, and few controlled evaluations of management consequences. A deployment-oriented framework is proposed in which measurement validity, calibration, forecast skill, decision thresholds, costs and non-target effects are appraised as connected requirements. Progress will depend less on marginal improvements in benchmark detection scores than on prospective, locally calibrated studies that measure timeliness, intervention quality, labour, pesticide use, yield and biodiversity outcomes.

Semiochemicals occupy a distinctive position in agricultural entomology because they can convert species- and context-specific chemical communication into tools for surveillance, behavioural manipulation and population suppression. This critical narrative review evaluates the evidence for semiochemical use in pest monitoring, mass trapping, attract-and-kill, mating disruption and integrated pest management, with particular attention to the transition from chemical discovery to reliable field performance. The literature was selected from agricultural, biological and multidisciplinary scholarly sources for the period 1 January 1990 to 19 June 2026, while retaining seminal studies needed to interpret current practice. The evidence is strongest for sex-pheromone monitoring and for mating disruption in well-characterised lepidopteran systems. Monitoring benefits from high sensitivity and taxonomic selectivity, but trap catch is not a direct measure of population density or crop injury unless lure performance, trap design, crop phenology, weather and management context are calibrated. Mass trapping and attract-and-kill can suppress pests, yet their success is more conditional because it depends on population density, immigration, target sex, lure competitiveness, trap retention, spatial deployment and persistence of the killing or release system. Plant volatiles, aggregation pheromones, repellents and herbivore-induced cues broaden the behavioural repertoire available for integrated pest management, although context dependence is greater and field validation is less mature. Digital camera traps, machine vision, receptor-guided discovery and biodegradable controlled-release matrices are important advances, but each introduces new validation requirements rather than eliminating ecological uncertainty. Across applications, the central translational weakness is a tendency to infer crop protection from behavioural response or trap capture without demonstrating injury, yield, economic or area-wide outcomes. Future progress requires standardised reporting of release rates and trap performance, multi-site field validation, explicit spatial design, integration with economic thresholds and biological control, and independent assessment of non-target and adoption consequences. Semiochemicals are therefore best understood not as stand-alone replacements for pesticides, but as information-rich components of ecologically designed pest management systems.

Digital marketing has moved from a peripheral communication activity to an increasingly consequential component of market access, customer relationship management and channel strategy in agribusiness. Yet the evidence is fragmented across agribusiness, agricultural economics, information systems and small-business research, and positive accounts of market reach often sit beside evidence of weak organisational readiness, logistics constraints and platform dependence. This critical narrative review synthesises literature on the role of websites, social media, social commerce, e-commerce marketplaces, online reputation mechanisms and live-streaming in agribusiness enterprises, with particular attention to small and medium-sized enterprises, farmer-entrepreneurs, cooperatives and agro-processors. Literature published from 2000 to 9 June 2026 was identified through accessible scholarly indexes, repositories, DOI and journal records, supplemented by authoritative institutional sources and citation searching. The evidence indicates that digital marketing can reduce information and search frictions, expand geographic reach, enable direct selling, intensify customer interaction and strengthen reputation signalling. Its contribution to sales, prices and enterprise growth is nevertheless conditional rather than automatic. Benefits depend on managerial digital capability, strategic integration of channels, credible product information, fulfilment and cold-chain performance, customer trust, social connections and supportive digital ecosystems. Much of the firm-level literature remains cross-sectional and geographically concentrated, while stronger quasi-experimental evidence concerns e-commerce penetration more broadly rather than marketing capability itself. Platform-mediated marketing also creates new forms of intermediation through visibility algorithms, traffic acquisition costs, certification systems and dependence on dominant platforms. The review therefore reframes digital marketing in agribusiness as an organisational and ecosystem capability rather than a collection of promotional tools. Research should move towards longitudinal and causal designs, channel-level profitability measures, comparative work beyond China and Europe, and explicit analysis of platform governance, inclusion, logistics and resilience.