Relative abundance of tephritid fruit flies with methyl eugenol traps in capsicum

摘要

Capsicum {Capsicum annuum L.), also known as bell pepper or sweet pepper, is a popular vegetable in India. Among various insect pests of capsicum, fruit flies (Diptera: Tephritidae) are considered to be a major pest causing extensive damage to capsicum growing areas of Mizoram and the yield loss can approach 70-80 % in chilli (Boopathi et al., 2013b) and tomato (Boopathi, 2013). The pest deteriorates the crop yield and also its quality due to premature droppage of infested fruits (Gupta et al., 1990). The population buildup of any insect is associated with the weather parameters prevailing during, preceding and corresponding periods (Latif and Abdullah, 2005, Boopathi et al., 2013c). The pest status does not remain static throughout the year but changes accordingly based on abiotic factors like temperature, relative humidity, rainfall, rainy days, etc. (Gajalakshmi et al., 2011, Boopathi et al., 2013a). Since the information available on this aspect is meager, the present study was undertaken to study the role and reliability of weather factors for predicting fruit flies incidence/catches. Further, the effect of weather data range for accurate assessment of fruit flies incidence/catches was also explored.