Bio-Systematic Investigations on Insect Pests of Sweet Potato

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Date
2016
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MPUAT, Udaipur
Abstract
Bio-systematic investigations oninsect pests of sweet potato were carried outin the Department of Entomology and at the Horticulture Farm, Rajasthan College of Agriculture, MPUAT, Udaipur, with an aim to estimate the species diversity of insect pests of major tuber crops, ascertain relationship of environmental factors with the insect fauna associated with sweet potato andmorphologically characterize to identify dominant insect pests of sweet potato up to generic level.The diversity of insect pests on tropical tuber crops comprised insects belonging to 13 families representing 4 orders: Coleoptera (3); Orthoptera (1); Lepidoptera (2); and Hemiptera (7).Family Chrysomelidae emerged as the dominant pestiferous fauna in the cultivated tuber crops with the relative density values ranged from 42.85 to 54.54 per centwith highest (54.54%) recorded in yam followed by that for sweet potato (43.47%). The Shannon and Simpson’s diversity indices were highest for sweet potato 1.65 and 3.724, respectively. The incidence of the members of Chrysomelidae, Curculionidae, Pyrgomorphidae, Noctuidae andApionidaeinitiated to infest the crop from 29th SMW and prevailed thought the cropping season; whereas,Pentatomidae from 30th SMW;Coreidae and Membracidae from 31st SMW; Cicadellidae and Delphacidaefrom 33rd SMW and Aleyrodidae from 41st SMW. Members of the family Coccinellidae, Gryllidae and Staphylinidae began to be active in the 29th, 30th and 32nd SMW respectively.Population of chrysomelids, apionids, cicadellids and gryllids exhibited significant positive correlation with mean atmospheric temperature (r= 0.60, 0.22, 0.65 and 0.45 respectively) and relative humidity (r= 0.41, 0.39, 0.70 and 0.38 respectively); whereas, noctuids and coccinellids exhibited significant negative correlation with relative humidity (r= -0.70 and -0.24 respectively); curculionids exhibited significant positive correlation with relative humidity (r= 0.37);coreids and delphacids exhibited significant positive correlation with mean atmospheric temperature(r= 0.28 and 0.58 respectively);pentatomidsexhibited significant negative correlation with mean atmospheric temperature (r= -0.21) and significant positive correlation with relative humidity (r= 0.49);aleyrodidsexhibited significant positive correlation with mean atmospheric temperature (r= 0.68) and significant negative correlation with relative humidity (r= -0.38).The morphological characterization of the dominant species belonging to 11 genera of family Chrysomelidae (Coleoptera) and one genus of family Apionidae (Coleoptera) has been described.
Description
Bio-Systematic Investigations on Insect Pests of Sweet Potato
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Citation
Purushan and Swaminathan, 2016
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