Vol. 12, Issue 7 (2023)

Author(s):
Chetna Khandekar, Vikas Singh, SM Ali Humayun, Gajendra Chandrakar and Roshani Pisda

Abstract:
The experiment was conducted under All India Coordinated Research Project (AICRP) during Rabi 2020–2021 and 2021–2022 at the College of Agriculture, IGKV, Raipur (C.G.). In Chhattisgarh, the major pest of safflower is aphid, Uroleucon compositae(Theobald) was found active from stem elongation stage to the maturity stage of crop during both years Rabi 2020-21 and 2021-22. The observations were recorded during the early morning hours in a weekly basis on IGKV Kusum variety of safflower. The U. compositaewere counted on 5 cm of the apical shoot length. The peak activity of U. compositae found during last week of Februrary to first week of March. Natural enemies like coccinellid beetles and praying mantids were counted as numbers of insects/plant. The correlations of U. compositae with different abiotic viz., minimum temperature and relative humidity II was found significant and negative (r = -0.499*) and (r = -0.417*), while with sun shine hours it was found positive significant (r = 0.516*). The correlation of biotic parameters such as coccinellid beetles with U. compositae was found highly significant and positive (r = 0.920*, r = 0.896* and r = 0.891*), while with praying mantis it was found negative non-significant in both the years.