Dr. Narit Thaochan (PhD Agricultural Science) was appointed as Associate Professor (Entomology) in the Agricultural Innovation and Management Division (Pest Management), Faculty of Natural Resources, Prince of Songkla University, Hat Yai, Songkhla province, Thailand. He started his career as an instructor and researcher at the Faculty of Natural Resources in 2010. He was born on November 24th, 1980. He received his B.Sc. (Agriculture) in Plant Pathology in 2003 at the Faculty of Agriculture, Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai province, Thailand. He received a scholarship to study for his PhD under The Royal Golden Jubilee PhD. The program, Thailand Research Fund at Walailak University, Nakhon Si Thammarat province, Thailand and graduated in 2010. He received the Endeavour Research Fellowship in 2015 to do a postdoc at Macquarie University, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. His main academic area is entomology, especially in the biological control of economic insect pests and entomopathogenic fungal technology. His research works focused on controlling tephritid fruit flies with entomopathogenic fungi and biocontrol agent product development. He has been doing fruit fly research for over 20 years, starting with his graduate studies in 2004. While the fruit fly research work is carried on, indeed, he also investigates the biology of the fruit flies as fundamentals such as life cycle and host preference. Now, he has another research project on rubber leaf fall disease in Thailand. This is a newly emerging disease and a severe problem for rubber plantations in Thailand. He and his colleague established a business unit of biocontrol agents and natural products in agriculture that was granted by the university. He developed pest management products from natural latex and patented 2 products, i.e., rubber fly lure for tephritid fruit flies and rubber para clay for insect repellent. He has published 31 international and 33 national research papers, made 14 presentations at scientific conferences and written 3 books (in the Thai language).
