Vol. 14 No. 3
Monitoring of alate mustard aphid (Lipaphis erysimi Kaltenbach) by using yellow sticky trap in West Bengal
Author(s): S. K. Sahoo and A. Saha
Abstract: The mustard aphid is a serious pest of mustard in India and other tropical regions in the world. The population dynamics of the pest is highly influenced by immigrant alate which migrate to the mustard crop from the off-season shelter. The results indicated that initial appearance of the alate aphid was noticed during 50th Standard Meteorological Week (first fortnight of December), then it gradually increased with slight fluctuation and finally declined after 10th Standard Meteorological Week (5th March – 11th March). Maximum trapping of alate mustard aphid (305 – 457 alate aphid trap-1) was recorded during the end of February (8th and 9thStandard Meteorological Week) might be because of maturity of the crop and increasing temperature at that period which influenced the formation of alate aphid for migration. Weather factors like temperature (maximum and minimum), relative humidity (maximum & minimum) and wind speed were significantly correlated with the incidence of alate aphid particularly, maximum temperature resulted highest positive correlation (r = 0.698*). In general during the experiment higher population of alate aphid were observed when maximum temperature was <30°C and minimum temperature was <16°C. It was found from the regression analysis, that combined influence of weather parameters had more influence on incidence of alate aphid than the single weather parameter.