Seasonal occurrence of two spotted spider mite, Tetranychus urticae Koch infesting okra

Abstract

A field experiment was carried out to study the occurrence pattern of two-spotted spider mite infesting okra during summer and kharif, 2021 along with the role of weather parameters on the seasonal occurrence. During the study, occurrence of the two spotted spider mite, T. urticae on okra crop were observed from February to May. The occurrence of T. urticae started during 1st week of April (14th SMW) during summer, 2021. Initially, its population was low (0.63 mites/1 cm2) which was gradually increased and attend a maximum level during the 3rd week of May (20th SMW) (17.9 mites/1 cm2 leaf area). Then after, it was in decreasing trend and disappeared from 4th week of May due to heavy rain and thunder storm. Correlation studies between mite population with various weather parameters were found that the evapotranspiration (0.840**) had highly significant positive and morning relative humidity (-0.660*) had significant negative correlation with mite population.