Vol. 12, Issue 6 (2023)

Author(s):
Karanjeet Kaur, Navdeep Kaur, Gurleen Kaur and Kavita Bajaj

Abstract:
Arthropods play very crucial roles in maintaining productive and healthy orchard ecosystem. The diverse fauna of arthropods which inhibit the ecosystem of peach orchard include pests, natural enemies and pollinators. In our study, we assessed the biodiversity and abundance of arthropods visitors in peach orchard. Different methods including sweep nets, visual searching methods, yellow sticky traps and pheromone traps at fortnight interval resulted in a total of twenty species of arthropods collection. Among them, pollinators including eight species constituted a large proportion of arthropods followed by four species of each group viz. arachnids, insect-pests and natural enemies. Among pollinators apidae family showed maximum relative abundance (82%) followed by syrphidae (10%) and halicitdae (8%). The relative abundance was highest in Apis mellifera (21.74%) followed by A. cerana (17.36%) and lowest relative abundance was observed in Xylocopa fenestrata (6.85%). All the pollinator species were most active at 1200h of the day in comparison to 1600h and 0800h. In case of pests, Myzus persicae (47.11%) was the most abundant insect while among arachnids Tetranychus urticae (7.81%) was the most prominent mite that attacks the peach trees. Among natural enemies, Coccinella septumpunctata (7.98%) was the most dominant insect. Maximum mean abundance of all the pests and natural enemies were observed during the months of April to June and that of pollinators were observed during peak flowering season February-March. Our data on abundance and diversity of arthropods will help in efficient management of pests without causing considerable damage to beneficial insects.