Author(s):

Sowmiya L, Chandrasekaran M and Soundararajan RP

Abstract: Tephritid fruit flies are the most economic insect pest in fruits and vegetable ecosystem. It damages the crop from fruit initiation stage to harvesting of the crop. The management of fruit flies in snake gourd ecosystem is troublesome because their partial life time completed within the host and pupates in soil. The only eco friendly and safe method of management of fruit flies is through para pheromonal traps. In the large scale cultivation, depending on commercial lure are uneconomical, moreover most of the farmers are unaware of its availability and utility. Hence, the identification of cost effective, locally available resources may highly helpful to the farming community. Focusing this in view, the low cost and easily available natural sources of banana, grapes, molasses, fishmeal, red pumpkin, snake gourd, ocimum and crucifers in combination with yeast, black jaggery and acetic acid or ammonium acetate (5%) were evaluated in snake gourd field for trapping of both the sexes of fruit flies. The result of the present investigation showed that the male fruit flies were captured maximum (17.67 fruit flies/ trap) in the natural extracts of banana with yeast, black jaggery and 5% acetic acid followed by grapes (15.33 fruit flies/trap). The snake gourd red pumpkin are next in performance. The ocimum and cruciferous leaf extracts to be least in attraction of male fruit flies. The female fruit flies are highly attracted to the ammonium acetate combination of banana and grapes with the fruit fly catches of 11.00 and 6.00 fruit flies/trap. The fruit extracts of red pumpkin and snake gourd was found be next. The synthetic attractants of methyl eugenol and cue lure was found to be least performance of female fruit flies (1.67 and 1.00 fruit flies/trap). On comparing the overall natural attractant sources, banana and grapes was found to be effective in trapping of fruit flies with the highest cost benefit ratio of 1.82 and 1.74. The farmers are advised to use banana or grapes for fruit flies management and to increasing the yield with high benefit cost ratio in snake gourd ecosystem.

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