Vol. 11, Issue 12 (2022)

An on farm trial was conducted at Agricultural Entomology Section, College of Agriculture, Pune to study the role of insect pollinators on mustard yield. Mustard variety-Pusa Bold was grown, following all the recommended agronomic practices except the application of insecticides. The comparative mean data pertaining to the quantitative parameters of mustard crop such as number of pods/plant, number of seeds/pod, weight of 1000 seeds (g) and seed yield (kg/ha) revealed that significantly highest values were obtained in open pollinated crop (164.40, 13.83, 4.38 and 1916.66, respectively), followed by crop covered with mosquito net (131.51, 11.57, 3.08 and 1446.68, respectively). The lowest values were recorded in the crop covered with muslin cloth (107.74, 9.89, 2.87 and 1193.49, respectively). The insect pollinators play a vital role in pollination services and hence, increase the yield of mustard crop.