Author(s):

J Ghosh, VD Lohot, S Ghosal, V Singhal and K Thamilarasi

Abstract: Pruning provides suitable ground (tender shoots) for the lac insect to feed. Pruning of host plant is an important and foremost requirement for lac cultivation which determines successof lac crop. Swadi palas, a morphological variant of common palas (Buteamonosperma) prefers kusmi strain. Farmer prefers to pruneswadipalas trees in the mid-month of December to prevent loss of lac resin due to shattering of lac encrustation from petiole and harvest ari (i. e. immature) lac. Owing to this untimely pruning-cum-lac harvesting, tree does not produce sufficient healthy tender shoots and alsoreceives low price from selling ari scrapedlac. To suggest the appropriate pruning time trees wereprunedin the mid of December, January, February and March and kusmi broodlac was inoculated in July for three consecutive years 2014-2017. Inoculable new shoots length was significantly higher in the mid of January and February pruning as compared to farmers practice of pruning in December. Length and width of new shoots had significant and positive correlation with broodlac yield (0.673 and 0.498, respectively) whereas its correlation with number of shoots was significantly negative (-0.344). Broodlac yield ratio was significantly higher in January (6.24) and February (6.28) pruning as compared to December pruning (4.76).Our investigation observed that January and February pruning increased broodlac yield by 18 to 21%.

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