The place of dragonflies in Kashmir’s fields and orchards

How Kashmir’s forgotten aerial predators could strengthen natural pest management and contribute to smarter crop protection

By Mauzam Bakshi

For generations, the arrival of summer in Kashmir was accompanied by dragonflies sweeping over paddy fields, irrigation channels, ponds, streams and orchards in pursuit of flying insects. They were such a familiar part of the countryside that their potential importance to agriculture was rarely considered.

Yet the dragonfly is not simply a summer insect. It is an efficient aerial predator and one component of the natural-enemy community that operates within agricultural ecosystems. As Kashmir’s agriculture and horticulture become increasingly intensive, that ecological role deserves closer scientific attention.

The Valley’s farming systems have changed considerably. Paddy cultivation has become more input-intensive, horticulture has expanded, orchard planting has become denser and chemical crop protection has become a core part of commercial production.

Farmers face recurring pesticide costs, while pest resistance, shifting pest populations and environmental concerns are making crop protection more complex.

The answer is not to abandon chemical protection. It is to make pest management more precise and to use the biological processes already present within the farming system. This is where dragonflies can have a place.

Efficient aerial predators

Dragonflies and damselflies, collectively known as odonates, are among the most specialised aerial predators in the insect world. Their large compound eyes give them an exceptionally broad field of vision, while four independently controlled wings allow them to hover, accelerate and change direction rapidly.

Adult dragonflies hunt on the wing, feeding on mosquitoes, midges, flies and other small flying insects. Some species also take moths and other flying arthropods.

Their importance should not be overstated. A dragonfly is no substitute for an insecticide, nor can it control major crop pests alone. Many economically important pests spend much of their life cycle on leaves, inside plant tissue, beneath bark or in the soil, entirely out of reach of an aerial hunter.

Their real significance lies in their contribution to the wider natural-enemy community. Alongside ladybird beetles, lacewings, predatory bugs, spiders, parasitoid wasps, ground beetles and insectivorous birds, dragonflies add another predatory pathway, particularly against flying insects.

This is the principle behind conservation biological control: protecting and managing naturally occurring predators so they can help keep pest populations below economically damaging levels.

Agriculture depends on more than the field

Dragonflies depend on both land and water, which gives this approach particular relevance here.

Their immature stages are aquatic. Nymphs develop in ponds, marshes, streams and irrigation channels, sometimes over months or years, feeding as predators themselves before emerging as winged adults.

That means the relationship between dragonflies and agriculture extends beyond the field or orchard itself.

A pond beside a field, a functioning irrigation channel, or a freshwater habitat near an orchard is part of the ecological infrastructure that supports natural enemies, and its condition shapes biodiversity well beyond the water’s edge.

As Kashmir’s orchards intensify, that ecological space tends to shrink. Vegetation is cleared, orchard floors are kept uniform, water channels are stripped bare, and pesticide applications can expose non-target organisms.

This improves operational convenience but can reduce habitat diversity.

The goal is not to let orchards go unmanaged. It is to introduce strategic habitat management without compromising production: retaining selected vegetation along boundaries and near freshwater features where it does not interfere with operations, mowing strategically rather than uniformly, and maintaining native grasses and flowering plants in designated areas.

Protecting breeding habitats

For dragonflies, protecting breeding habitat is especially important.

Ponds, channels, streams and wet areas should be shielded from unnecessary pollution and physical disturbance, with direct contamination during spraying avoided and attention paid to wind and pesticide drift.

Such measures can benefit other natural enemies and pollinators as well.

Chemical insecticides remain essential when pest populations threaten economic production. The problem arises when applications become routine rather than evidence-based, particularly with broad-spectrum products that affect target pests as well as beneficial organisms.

Integrated Pest Management (IPM) offers a more sophisticated framework: monitor crops, correctly identify pests, assess their abundance and economic significance, consider the activity of natural enemies and then select the most appropriate intervention — cultural, mechanical or biological where practical, and chemical where justified.

Within that system, the dragonfly is not the treatment. It is part of the biological infrastructure that supports the wider pest-management system.

Kashmir needs its own evidence

Research from rice-growing regions across India and Asia shows that odonates can form a significant part of predator communities in rice fields, wetlands and irrigation environments, with their abundance shaped by water availability, habitat structure and pesticide exposure.

Similar findings from biodiversity-friendly rice systems in Japan and parts of Southeast Asia, as well as European conservation-biological-control research on field margins and non-crop vegetation, point in the same general direction.

However, Kashmir-specific data remains limited and any figures cited in support of this argument should be traced to named studies before publication.

Importantly, dragonflies are not typically released into fields as commercial biological-control agents. Their value lies in conserving populations already adapted to local conditions, not introducing new ones.

For Kashmir, the real task is determining whether existing practices can conserve the odonates already present and whether their presence produces measurable pest-regulation benefits.

That is a research question, not yet an established answer.

Kashmir needs systematic data on the odonate species in its agricultural landscape, which species occur in paddy fields and apple-growing areas, where they breed, when adults appear, how far they range from breeding sites, what they eat, and how their populations respond to different pesticide and habitat regimes.

Most importantly, researchers need to establish whether conserving them produces measurable agricultural benefits.

From observation to field trials

This could be tested through replicated field trials.

For instance, selected apple orchards could be compared under conventional management with plots where freshwater habitat is protected, vegetation retained and pesticide exposure to non-target areas minimised.

Researchers could track odonate abundance and diversity alongside aphid and other pest populations, crop damage, activity of other natural enemies, number of pesticide applications, yield, fruit quality and production costs.

The same approach could apply to paddy fields connected to ponds, channels and wetlands.

An institution such as SKUAST-Kashmir or the Horticulture department would be well placed to lead such research.

This matters economically as well as ecologically.

Every pesticide application carries a cost. If better monitoring, habitat management and stronger natural-enemy populations can prevent unnecessary applications without weakening crop protection, farmers benefit on both fronts.

But the goal is never pesticide reduction for its own sake. It is better pest management.

A farmer should not tolerate damaging pest levels simply because predators are present, nor should pesticide be applied automatically when pest populations remain below economic thresholds and natural enemies are already doing their job.

A different way of looking at the farm

This matters especially for Kashmir’s apple industry, where crop protection is tightly linked to production costs and fruit quality.

It applies equally to paddy landscapes, which can be more biologically complex and resilient when they retain water, vegetation and diverse predator communities alongside cultivation.

The dragonfly represents something larger than a single insect: the biological processes agriculture often overlooks when a farm is viewed purely as a production unit.

A field is an ecosystem. An orchard is an ecosystem.

Within both are organisms that compete with crops, pollinate them and prey on the ones that damage them. The challenge is understanding these relationships well enough to use them without sacrificing productivity.

For Kashmir, that means moving towards a more integrated model of crop protection, one built on pest surveillance, economic thresholds, selective chemical intervention and conservation of natural enemies and the habitats that sustain them.

Dragonflies will not replace pesticides and they should not be presented as a miracle solution to Kashmir’s pest problems.

Their value is more subtle and potentially more important. They are part of a living system in which water, vegetation, insects, birds and crops interact.

The real opportunity is to make that system work better for the farmer.

If Kashmir can protect the ponds and channels where dragonflies begin their lives, retain the habitats that support natural enemies, monitor pests more carefully and use pesticides only when they are justified, the fields and orchards of the Valley could become not only more productive, but biologically stronger.

The next time a dragonfly sweeps across an apple orchard or hovers above a paddy field, it may be worth seeing it differently.

It is not simply passing through.

It may already be doing a small part of the work of protecting the crop.