Vol. 11, Issue 9 (2022)

Author(s):
RM Patel, HC Patel and RG Parmar

Abstract:
A field experiment was conducted to study the seasonal incidence of spotted pod borer, Maruca vitrata in cowpea variety AVCP-1 at Entomology farm, B. A. College of Agriculture, AAU, Anand during Kharif, 2021. The incidence of M. vitrata in cowpea was commenced from 6^th week after sowing i.e. 4^th week of August (34^th SMW) with 0.60 larva/plant and gradually increased to reached its first peak (3.51 larvae/plant) and the highest peak (6.97 larvae/plant) during the 1^st week of September (36^th SMW) and 2^nd week of October (41^st SMW) when crop age was 8^th and 13^th weeks old, respectively. Thereafter, the population gradually declined towards the crop maturity. Concerned to the damage of M. vitrata on pods of cowpea, it was recorded between 8.63 to 59.93% per plant. The maximum pod damage i.e. 59.93% per plant was observed in the second week of October (41^st SMW) when M. vitrata incidence was at its highest peak. The population of M. vitrata had highly significant negative correlation with wind speed (-0.882**) whereas, bright sunshine hours (0.586*) and maximum temperature (0.625*) showed significant positive association on cowpea. Furthermore, it was worked out that the bright sunshine hours, maximum temperature and wind speed each contributed 11, 10.9 and 68.2% of the variation in the M. vitrata larval population, respectively.