Bamboo Flowering and Rodent Control

Contents: Foreword. Preface. 1. Bamboo Resources, Management and Researches in Taiwan/Dar-Hsiung Wang. 2. Management and Environmental Conservation of Bamboo Forests on the Slopeland in Taiwan/Shin-Hwei Lin. 3. History, Current Status, and Prospects of the Bamboo Industry in Taiwan/Yu-Jen Lin. 4. Development of Bamboo Green Building Material and its Application/Min-Chyuan Yeh. 5. Bamboos of Western Himalaya and Flowering Event/H.B. Naithani. 6. Flowering Characteristics and Seedling Growth of Four Bamboo Species in Taiwan/Tsai-Huei Chen. 7. Ecological Impact Assessment and Predictive Modeling of Bamboo flowering/S.K. Barik, D. Adhikari and Evanylla Kharlyngdoh. 8. Bamboo Flowering Related Upsurge in Rodents and their Management in North-Eastern India/N.S. Azad Thakur, K. Saikia and D. Kumar.  9. Regeneration of Bamboo in North-East India after Recent Large Scale Death Due to Gregarious Flowering/Ratan Lal Banik. 10. Development of Bamboo Mosaic Virus as a Plant Expression Vector for Functional Study of Genes Involved in Bamboo Flowering/Na-Sheng Lin. 11. Effects of Taiwan Vole (Microtus kikuchii) Herbivory on Yushan Cane (Yushania niitakayamensis) Growth in Alpine Meadows of Taiwan/Y. Kirk Lin,, Su-Han Yeh, and Jih-Tay Hsu. 12. Helminth Parasitism in Rodents in Bamboo Growing Areas of Mizoram: Potential Candidates for Biological Control/Veena Tandon and C. Malsawmtluangi. Index.

The factors that cause flowering in bamboos remain a botanical mystery. Many causes have been attributed to trigger gregarious flowering in bamboo but it has not been possible to establish their consistency. People believe that famine, death and natural disasters are associated events of bamboo flowering. Death of large populations of bamboos spread over large tracts of forest areas in Asia-Pacific region has been a cause of concern owing to the ecological, social and economic crises that set forth following bamboo flowering. During gregarious flowering, large quantities of seeds are produced. Many animals, particularly rodents feed on these nutritious seeds and reproduce fast to increase their population sizes. Once the seeds are exhausted due to germination, the rats/rodents depend on crops in the vicinity, thus causing famine. Considering the technological, scientific, socio-economic and environmental consequences of bamboo flowering and associated growth of rodent populations, the menace of bamboo flowering remains as a challenge. The book Bamboo flowering and rodent control includes 12 papers representing different dimensions of the subject authored by well-known Indian and Taiwan scientists, is an attempt to address this scientific challenge.