Population dynamics of important insect pests of soybean in relation to weather parameters

Abstract

A field experiment was carried out at the Instructional farm, Rajasthan College of Agriculture, Udaipur (Rajasthan State) on the population dynamics of major insect pests of soybean during kharif 2014 and 2015. Populations of jassids, whiteflies, semilooper and tobacco caterpillar were monitored weekly with different sampling techniques and the data generated were correlated with weather parameters. The results revealed that mean population of jassids, whiteflies, semilooper and tobacco caterpillar gradually increased, reaching a peak at 35th to 39th SMW and thereafter declined. The multiple linear regression analysis indicated that influence of weather parameters was 53.9% (R2=0.532) and 91.2% (R2=0.912) in relation to the population of jassids, 69.6% (R2=0.696) and 92.6% (R2=0.926) with that of whitefly, 79.5% (R2=0.795) and 91.7% (R2=0.917) with that of semilooper and 54.2% (R2=0.542) and 70.9% (R2=0.709) with that of tobacco caterpillar during kharif 2014 and 2015, respectively.