Sita Jaishi, Resham Bahadur Thapa, Kapil Kafle, Navraj Upadhyaya and Dipak Khanal*
Institute of Agriculture and Animal Science/T.U., Kathmandu, Nepal
*Corresponding author's email: dipak.khanal@pakc.tu.edu.np; dipakbabu@hotmail.com
*ORCID iD: 0000-0002-3907-5363

Abstract

Giant African snail (GAS) Achatina fulica (Bowdich) is the world's largest and most damaging land snail as it is highly invasive and can consume 10% of its body weight in daily basis and 500 different types of plants. Although there is high incidence of this pest at Kapilvastu, the management options are very less and ineffective. In this context, research was carried out to assess snails distribution, damage and management practices adopted by the farmers through household survey at Banganga-1, Kapilvastu district. The survey was conducted among 60- households which were selected through simple random sampling and interviewed using a semistructured questionnaire from May to June, 2020. The results exhibited the prevalence of three different snails such as giant African snail, garden-snail and paddy-snail in moist areas, drains and grassy land with their highest damage in rainy season. The most vulnerable stage was the vegetative stage (53.3%) in vegetables and fruits and the must preferred family of crops was cucurbitaceous (45%). Most respondents (48%) believed the lack of effective control method to be the main reason of the growing infestation and extent of damage. The respondents were found to prefer practicing hand picking and killing over other control measures. The study concludes that the problem of GAS is increasing and there are not effective measures to get rid of them.