Seasonal Incidence of Shoot and Fruit Borer (Leucinodes orbonalis Guenee) of Brinjal in Mid-Hills of Meghalaya

Abstract

The field experiments were conducted at Entomology Research Field, ICAR Research
Complex for North Eastern Hill Region, Umiam, Meghalaya during kharif- 2015 and
spring-2016 to study the seasonal incidence of shoot and fruit borer of brinjal with
reference to different dates of transplanting. The experiment was laid out in randomized
block design (RBD) with three replications. Seedlings of brinjal (variety: chhaya) were
raised in three different nursery beds for different date of transplanting during each year.
Brinjal seedlings (30days old) were transplanted in the plot size of 5m x 3m. Weekly
observations were taken from randomly selected 5 tagged plants/ plot for brinjal shoot and
fruit borer infestation on shoot from each planting. For fruit infestation, total number of
fruits and infested fruits were recorded/plot during each harvesting from each replication.
During 2015, considering the whole experimental period from April to September, it was
observed that peak infestation of shoot and fruit borer on shoot and fruit were in the 1st
week of August (34.20%) and in the 3rd week of August (46.75%), respectively whereas in
2016, irrespective of planting, the peak infestation on shoot and fruit were observed in the
4th week of April (21.00%) and 4th week of May (17.55%), respectively. Relative humidity
had positive influence on fruit infestation during both the years.