Author(s):

Sandeep Mandal, Saurabh Padamshali, Navneet Rana and Sonalika Kolhekar

Abstract: Brinjal, Solanummelongena L. (Eggplant) is one of the most important vegetable crops in Asia, where more than 90% of the world’s eggplant production occurs. Among different biotic and abiotic stresses, insect pest is one of the most important limiting factors for successful cultivation of brinjal. Especially, sucking pests particularly, aphid, jassid, whitefly, etc. results in 10-15% reduction of yield depending on the intensity of infestation. To combat these pests, chemical control is generally most popular among farming community, but it has many drawbacks. This situation warranted environmentally friendly pest control strategies to mitigate the problems created by chemical control. The use of bio-rational products such as cow-urine and vermin-wash is one of the alternatives to chemical pesticides in suppressing the insect pests. Use of cow-urine (Sapre and Varma, 2006; Gupta and Yadav, 2006) and vermin-wash (Subsashri, 2004; Pareet 2006 and Meenatchi et al., 2010) have been evaluated against insect pests by few workers in past and found encouraging results. No sincere attempt has been made in the past by any worker in Gujarat to assess the impact of cow-urine and vermi-wash in suppressing insect pests of brinjal. Hence, a number of indigenous knowledge based pest management module for brinjal have been formulated and tested in the agro-ecosystem under consideration during rabi season of 2015 and 2016. Inspiring results obtained in field trial from two years of study. Insect pest population observed lowest in chemical based pest management module but natural enemy complex found drastically low. On the contrary in indigenous knowledge based pest management module moderate pest population were recorded with higher natural enemy population. Thus, production cost reduced, non-target arthropod faunal complex less hampered and reasonable harvest recorded in indigenous knowledge based management module where almost all the indigenous technology were accommodated including use of sieve ash, cow urine, cow dung slurry and cow urine+cow dung slurry (Karkar et al., 2014).

Pages: 2065-2070  |  1565 Views  479 Downloads

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