INVESTIGATIONS ON INSECTICIDE RESISTANCE IN Spodoptera litura Fab. (LEPIDOPTERA: NOCTUIDAE)
Loading...
Date
2007-02
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
UNIVERSITY OF AGRICULTURAL SCIENCES GKVK, BENGALURU
Abstract
The tobacco caterpillar, Spodoptera litura (Fabricius), which was known
earlier to be a sporadic pest, has emerged as destructive polyphagous pest in the
recent past. This pest is distributed throughout southern and eastern world viz.,
tropical and temperate Asia, Australia and Pacific Islands (Feakin, 1973 and Kranz et
al., 1977) and infests more than 112 crop species belonging to 44 families, of which
40 species are known from India. The major host plants of S. litura include tobacco,
cotton, groundnut, castor, chilli, potato, soybean, cauliflower, cabbage, tomato, beans
and sunflower etc. The damage is done by the larvae, which initially scrape the leaf
tissue gregariously and feed in clusters and quickly skeletonize the leaves. The grown
up larvae defoliate the plants completely. This pest is next only to Helicoverpa
armigera (Hub.) in economic importance both at national and global level. Recently,
the pest has been appearing in severe form, especially during rainy and post rainy
seasons causing heavy yield losses throughout India. In 2003, its outbreak occurred in
Pakistan throughout the cotton belt devastating the crop (Mushtaq Ahmad et al.,
2007). The S. litura accounts for up to 17.71 and 70.00 per cent yield losses in
groundnut (Anon., 1983) and black gram (Krishnaiah et al., 1983) in Karnataka and
Andhra Pradesh, respectively. The monetary value of annual yield losses due to major
insect pests including S. litura in all the important agricultural crops is estimated to be
Rs. 29,240 crores (Dhaliwal and Arora, 1996).
Description
Keywords
null