Succession and incidence of insect fauna on green gram

Introduction

Pulses, the food legumes have been grown by farmers since millennia providing nutritionally balanced food to the people of India and many other countries in the world (Nene, 2006) [1] and pulses are popularly known as "Poor man's meat" and "rich man's vegetable". India is major pulses growing country in the world and Madhya Pradesh is largest producer state. The total area and production in India under kharif pulses crop is 105.57 lakh ha and 58.44 lakh tones, respectively with the productivity of 554 kg -1 (Anonymous, 2017) [2] . The major pulse crops that have been domesticated and are under cultivation include kharif pulses like green gram, black gram, red gram, cow pea and Rabi pulses like lentil, chickpea, pea etc. Among the pulses Chickpea, Pigeon pea, Mungbean, Urdbean, Lentil and Field pea are the important crops which are widely cultivated at national and global level. The green gram is attacked by number of insect-pests viz. aphid, Aphis craccivora (Koch), jassid, Empoasca kerri (Pruthi), white fly, Bemisia tabaci (Gennadius), blister beetle, Mylabris pustulata (Thunberg) and pod borer Helicoverpa armigera (Hubner) (Jain 2014) [3] .

Method and materials

The present studies were conducted at Research Farm, College of Agriculture, Gwalior during kharif season of 2018-19. Saket variety of green gram were sown on 9 August 2018 in a plot size of 9.0 m X 10.0 m with spacing of 30 cm X 10 cm. The observations on the insect fauna in each crop were recorded in the morning at weekly intervals starting from germination till the harvesting of the crop.Population of sucking insect pests (aphids, jassid, white fly, coreid bug,) were recorded by counting the number on three compound leaves i.e. top, middle and bottom portions/canopy of the randomly selected ten plants in each crop during early morning hours. Population of natural enemies (Coccinalid beetle) were also recorded by counting the number of adults present on ten randomly selected plants in each crop. Weekly data on Meteorological parameter, Viz. temperature, humidity, evaporation and rainfall were collected from the meteorological observatory of the college.

Results

The activity of aphid and whitefly was started from 34 th SMW and continued till harvest of the crop with its peak population (21.9 and 7.5 insects/3compound leaves/plant, respectively) in 38 th SMW. Bairwa and Singh (2017) [4] reported the peak population on aphid and whitefly in 36 th and 35 th SMW, respectively. Manju et al., (2016) [5] reported infestation of whitefly started from 2 nd week of august (32 th SMW) with its peak population on 3 rd week of September (36 th SMW). The variation in the time of peak population may be due to the climatic conditions of the region, stage of the crop and time of sowing. During present investigation the activity of jassid was started from 35 th SMW and reached its peak (4.9 jassids/3 compound leaves/plant) in 40 th SMW. Manju et al., (2016) [5] reported the infestation of jassid started from 2 nd week of august (33 rd SMW) and reached their peak in the first week of September (37 th SMW).The activity of coreid bug and flea beetle was started from 37 th SMW with its peak population (2.6 and 3.5 insects/plant) in 40 th SMW. Activity of Coccinellid beetle was started from 35 th SMW and continued till harvest of the crop with its peak population (1.7 beetles/plant) in 38 th SMW. During present investigation it was observed that the Coccinellid beetle population increased with an increase in aphid population. Yadav et al., (2015) [6] reported, coccinellid beetles attained its peak population in 39 th SMW. Choudhary et al., (2017) [7] also reported the population of beetles increased with increase in aphid population which corroborate with present findings. During present investigations significant positive correlation was observed in the population of all the insect fauna of green gram i.e. jassid, whitefly, flea beetle, coreid bud and coccinellid beetle with maximum temperature and evaporation. Marabi et al., (2017) [8] reported significant positive correlation of whitefly population with maximum temperature and evaporation. Kumar et al., (2017) [9] reported, jassid population showed significant positive correlation with maximum temperature. Khan et al., (2018) [10] also reported flea beetle gradually increased with increase in average temperature. The positive correlation of aphid population was also observed with minimum temperature and evaporation. The positive correlation of aphid population was also observed with minimum temperature and evaporation. Beeraganni (2012) [11] reported the correlation of aphid found positive and significant with evaporation. There was no significant correlation among all the insect fauna with minimum temperature relative humidity and rainfall.

References

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