Studies on seasonal incidence of sucking pests and pink bollworm, <em>Pectinophora gossypiella</em> (Saunders) in cotton (<em>Gossypium </em>spp.)

Abstract

A field experiment was conducted at AICRP on cotton, Haradanahalli, Chamarajanagara during kharif 2018 to know the population dynamics of insect pests of cotton on HB2110 cultivar. The peak incidence of aphids (64.28 aphids/3 leaves), leafhoppers (5.24 leafhoppers/3 leaves), thrips (5.51 thrips/3 leaves) and whiteflies (4.97 whiteflies/3leaves) were observed during 36, 28, 40 and 38th SMW. Pink bollworm incidence was started during 32 SMW and attended its severity at 46th (15 larvae/20 bolls).The correlation results of the meteorological variables with insect population revealed that aphids, thrips, whiteflies and PBW showed significant positive correlation with maximum temperature while, leafhopper showed positive non-significant correlation. However, all the above pests showed non-significant negative correlation with minimum temperature, evening relative humidity and rainfall except leafhopper and aphids showed significant positive correlation and non-significant negative correlation with morning relative humidity, respectively.