Managing serpentine leaf miner
THE AMERICAN serpentine leaf miner is capable of inflicting severe damage to several crops such as cowpea, redgram, blackgram, soybean, tomato, brinjal, bhendi, snakegourd, bittergourd, pumpkin, cotton and castor.
The females, during feeding and oviposition, puncture the leaf tip and leaf margins. The mine becomes noticeable in three to four days after oviposition and becomes larger in size as the larva matures.
Leaf drop
The pattern of mining is irregular. Extensive mining also causes premature leaf drop of the infested plants.
Wounding of foliage also allows entry of bacterial and fungal pathogens. Both leaf mining and stippling can greatly depress the level of photosynthesis in the plant, which ultimately affect the harvest.
Pest management
Yellow coloured sticky traps are the most effective in attracting and killing the adults.
The yellow traps kept at ground level and plant canopy level attract more than 2000 adults/trap/day in brinjal and tomato fields depending upon the field's pest incidence.
By this method the adults are killed before the egg laying, which reduces the damage level to a greater extent.
Plastic buckets
For making these traps, yellow coloured plastic buckets may be used or for longer durability, yellow painted iron tins may also be used.
The outer and top surface of the tins/buckets are to be smeared with castor oil.
Depending up on the intensity of attraction, sticky nature of the oil, traps may be cleaned once every three days and smeared with fresh oil for further use.
For monitoring of this pest, about 50 traps per acre may be placed and for mass trapping and killing, about 50-100 traps per acre may be placed depending up on the severity of damage.
C. DURAIRAJ, S. SURESH
& R. SHOBANADEVI
Department of Agricultural Entomology
Tamil Nadu Agricultural
University,
Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu
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