INTEGRATED MANAGEMENT OF TOBACCO BUDWORM, HELICOVERPA ARMIGERA (HUBNER) IN FCV TOBACCO

Abstract

Tobacco budworm, Helicoverpa armigera (Hubner) is one of the major insect pests of FCV tobacco causing damage above economic threshold level (>10% infestation) in southern black soil region of A.P. Farmers totally depend upon the chemical management practices and hence, the project was designed to develop an effective, eco-friendly and integrated management strategy for tobacco budworm and to minimize the usage of chemical insecticides in FCV tobacco. Evaluation of four pest management modules against tobacco budworm, Helicoverpa armigera was carried out for two consecutive seasons i.e. from 2019-20 to 2020-21 in 0.5 acre area at CTRI Research Station, Guntur. The two years data was pooled and analyzed statistically (T-test). Incremental benefit cost ratio was also worked out for each treatment/module The IPM module consists of growing 2 rows of marigold as trap crop around tobacco, setting up of bird perches @ 20/ha, hand picking of larvae for every 5 days from 25 DAP, spraying of NSKE 2% at 25 DAP, spraying Ha NPV @ 250 LE/ha at 40 DAP and one spray of chlorantraniliprole 18.5 SC @ 0.03% at 55 DAP. An unsprayed plot without any border crop was kept as control. The data revealed that IPM module (M1) exhibited 85.53% reduction of infestation by tobacco budworm, 6.07% increase of cured leaf yields with incremental benefit cost ratio of 2.42 over untreated control. Whereas, Chemical control module (M2) reduced budworm infestation by 89.94%, increased cured leaf yields by 6.72% and incremental benefit cost ratio of 2.78 over the control. Bio-module (M3) was also significantly superior to untreated control (M4), Both IPM module and chemical control module were on par and significantly superior in reducing budworm infestation over other two modules. The treatments with chemical spray schedules showed drastic reduction of natural enemy population.