Assessing the impact of varietal resistance and planting dates on pest spectrum in chickpea

Abstract

The cotton bollworm Helicoverpa armigera [Hübner (1808)] is one of the most widely spread pest which limits the chickpea production, while the beet armyworm, Spodoptera exigua (Hübner, 1808) has emerged as a serious pest in recent years, in southern India and parasitic wasp Campoletis chlorideae Uchida, 1968 is an important larval parasitoid which naturally manages both pests under field condition. Insecticides adoption leads to development of resistance in pod borer. In view of climate change scenario, the focus of the present studies was the identification of climate resilient cultivars of chickpea for pod borers and the results reveled, that there were significant variations in the level of eggs and larval population among the genotypes. Across seasons, the crop sown in October recorded the maximum number of eggs. ‘ICC 3137’ had the highest number of H. armigera eggs (11.6) across seasons. ‘JG 11’, (6.3) in 2012 and’ ICCV 10’ (3.6) in 2013 recorded the lowest number of H. armigera eggs. During 2014-15, the maximum(80.7) H. armigera larval incidence was observed in October sown crop and the lowest (21.1) in January crop. The number of S. exigua larvae were substantially higher in the December crop. For all seasons, the highest number of C. chlorideae were found in October crop. Across seasons, multiple regression analysis for both pest had a strong interaction with weather patterns.