Incidence of Major Insect Pest of Cluster Bean against Different Dates of Sowing

Aims: The present study was undertaken to determine the major sucking pests viz., jassid, Empoasca kerri, whitefly, Bemisia tabaci and aphid, Aphis craccivora and Thrips, Megalurothrips distalis attacking cluster bean crop sown at different dates to determine the optimum sowing of dates.

Place and Duration of Study: An experiment was conducted at the experimental farm, College of Agriculture, Gwalior (Madhya Pradesh) during two consecutive years of Kharif 2022 and 2023 to evaluate the effect of different sowing dates on incidence and severity of insect pest against cluster bean.

Methodology: An experiment was laid out in a simple randomized block design with five different dates of sowing. The observations on the population of sucking pest were recorded on Ten randomly selected tagged plants at weekly intervals. The data were subjected to statistical analysis by adopting the appropriate method of analysis of variance.

Results: The results show that the early sown crop had the minimum infestation of major sucking pests and the highest seed yield was obtained as compared to the late sowing crop. Our research found that sowing date has a substantial impact on pest populations, with early sowing dates often having fewer pest pressures than later dates. This can be attributed to the synchronization of crop development stages and insect life cycles.

Conclusion: The result was concluded that crops sown on early date are less susceptible to significant insect pests such aphid, jassid, thrips and whitefly. However, Crops sown later were more vulnerable to insect pest attack, resulting in more damage and lower production.