'This is becoming very expensive for farmers who are hardly making any money due to the
bollworm attack,' Waturu said.
Person correlations between average populations of predators (lady beetles and spiders) and prey (American, pink and spotted
bollworm) population were found to understand predator and prey relationships.
Studies undertaken by previous researchers (Greenplate et al., 2000, Adamczyk and Sumerford, 2001, Holt et al., 2002, Gutierrez et al., 2006) concluded that the efficacy of Bt cotton against
bollworm varies among cotton varieties depending on the expression of Cry1Ac gene and fluctuations throughout the raising season (Olsen et al., 2005; Karanthi et al., 2005; Bakhsh et al., 2010; Adamczyk et al., 2009).
He said that cotton growers should act upon the off-season management to save next crops from attack of pink
bollworm.
Therefore, present study was carried out to observe the population of
bollworm complex on different varieties of cotton.
Bt cotton was claimed to be resistant to the most common pest of cotton in India, the pink
bollworm. In 2006, just four years after its release by Monsanto, the pink
bollworm had become resistant to it in Western India.
On April 1, a 25-year-old distressed farmer, Bharat Survase, attempted suicide and is battling for life due to mounting debts and a failed cotton crop that was destroyed by the pink
bollworm, a menace faced by cotton growers.
Off-season management strategy adopted well before cotton sowing would minimize the chances of attack by pink
bollworm and other pests, he said.
According to Cotton Ginners Forum Chairman Ihsanul Haq, the Punjab government has put restrictions on cotton sowing before mid-April under Section 144 believing that it will save the crop from pink
bollworm.
He also pointed out that there is a lack of researches in pink
bollworm and urged the entomologists to come up with the viable solutions to the problem.
At the same time cotton accounts for 58% of the insecticides used in India and 60% of the insecticides used are to control the "
bollworm complex" Helicoverpa zea, the American
bollworm or tomato grub and Helicoverpa armigera, the Old World
bollworm.
Punjab was projected to produce 10.5 million bales this year, but the projection was revised downward to 7.4 million bales following erratic rainfall in some areas and attack of pink
bollworm and whitefly.
Abstract: Studies were carried out on pe effect of micronutrients on spotted
bollworm Earias vittella F.
The surprise comes especially when different species of
bollworms, such as American, Pink and Spotted
bollworm, were supposed to be eradicated after feasting on the GM Bt cotton crop.
