Seasonal incidence of insect pests of sesame in relation to environmental factors

摘要

Sesame; Sesamum indicum (Linn.), commonly called Til (family: Pedaliaceae) is one of the important edible oilseed crops cultivated in India. Sesame seed is rich in oil (50 per cent) and protein (18-20 per cent). There is a great need to boost up the productivity of sesame but the insect pests are one of the major constraints in enhancing it. The crop is reported to be damaged by 29 insect pests (Rai; 1976); however, due to the changed cropping pattern, the insect pest complex has swollen to about 65including one mite species (Ahuja and Bakhetia, 1993). These pests damage the crop at different stages of growth.In order to prevent the infestation of the pests and to produce a quality crop, it is essential to manage the pest population at appropriate time with suitable measures. The weather conditions prevailing in a region play an important role in the occurrence and subsequent build up of pest population. As such studies were undertaken to find out the correlation between pest population and weather parameters.