National Bureau of Agricultural Insect Resources - NBAIR - formerly NBAII

National Bureau of Agricultural Insect Resources is located in Hebbal in the same premises at which The Commonwealth Institute of Biological Control (CIBC), Indian Station was established in 1957. The advent of CIBC marked the beginning of organized and systematic biological control research in India. During this period, our knowledge of natural enemies of crop pests and weeds increased manifold. CIBC Indian station was closed during 1987 and All India Coordinated Research Project on Biological Control of Crop Pests and Weeds (AICRP-BC&W), which was launched in 1977 under the aegis of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research was shifted to the same campus in 1988. The centre was named as Biological Control Centre and the entire programme functioned under the administrative/financial control of the National Centre for Integrated Pest Management (ICAR). In the eighth five-year plan, the project was elevated to an independent Project Directorate of Biological Control, with its headquarters in Bangalore during 1993. PDBC was the nodal agency in the country that organizes biological control research at the national level with 16 centres spread across the country. The Directorate at Bangalore carried out basic research on the biosystematics of important groups of insect bioagents. The reference collection maintained at PDBC was catalogued in the form of a technical bulletin on and also available in a retrievable, electronic format. Besides work on strain development, molecular characterization, mass production technologies, semiochemicals, biopesticides work for insect and disease management was intensified. During XI plan, PDBC was upgraded as National Bureau of Agriculturally Important Insects (NBAII) to act as a nodal agency for collection, characterization, documentation, conservation, exchange and utilization of agriculturally important insect resources (including mites and spiders) for sustainable agriculture and these activities is divided in three divisions. 1. Division of Insect Systematics 2. Division of Molecular Entomology 3. Division of Insect Ecology