Potato Tobacco Caterpillar: Spodoptera litura
Symptoms of damage:
- The young larvae first feed gregariously and scrape the leaves
- Older larvae spread out and may completely devour the leaves resulting in poor growth of plants
Identification of pest
- Egg: Masses appear golden brown
- Larva: Pale greenish with dark markings
- Adult: Forewings are brown in colour with wavy white marking, hind wings are white in colour with a brown patch along the margin
Management:
- Plough the soil to expose and kill the pupae
- Grow castor along border and irrigation channel as trap crop
- Flood the field to drive out the hibernating larvae
- Set up light trap @1/ha
- Pheromone traps (Pherodin SL) @ 15/ ha to attract male moths
- Collect and destroy egg masses in castor and tomato
- Hand pick grown up larvae and kill them
- Spray Sl NPV @ 1.5X1012 POBs/ha + 2.5 Kg crude sugar + 0.1 % teepol
Poison bait:
- Rice bran 5 Kg + Molasses or Brown sugar 500g + Carbaryl 50 WP 500g+ 3lit of water/ha
- Mix the ingredients well – Kept around the field in the evening hours
- Spray chlorpyriphos 20 EC 2 lit/ha or dichlorovos 76 WSC 1 lit/ha.
Source-
- TamilNadu Agritech Portal
