Assessment of Barley Varieties Potential to Grain Weevil Infestation at Storage

Abstract

Crop genetic potential to resist storage pest is very crucial to minimize quantity and quality of grain mass loss during storage. The granary weevil primarily affects barley crop at storage. Due to this reason, an experiment was carried out by using Complete Randomized Design (CRD) with three replications. The work was designed with the objectives to identify resistance potential of barley varieties against weevil (Sitophilus granarius) damage and to identify the quantity and physical quality loss of barley varieties against storage weevils. For analysis of variance percentage of weight loss, percent of damaged seeds, and many weevils, data was collected. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) of the collected data revealed a highly significant difference (P<0.0001) among the studied varieties for the percent of damaged seeds and percentage of weight loss, whereas the number of weevils among the tested varieties was non-significantly different. The results of this study show that Sitophilus granarius can bring 12.1-25.91% and 3.17-6.17% of both quantity and quality losses respectively on barley crop at storage. The mean comparison between improved barley varieties (Holker, IBON 174/03 and HB 1966) and local variety shows a significant difference for the percent of damaged seeds and percentage of weight loss, but the non-significant difference for HB 1307 barley variety. Among the studied barley varieties, IBON 174/03 variety revealed high susceptibility to granary weevil. Generally, in this study, the local barley variety manifested resistant potential than improved barley varieties to granary weevil infestation for both quantity and quality loss.