Management of Sucking Pests of early Season Cotton by Application of different Seed and Soil Insecticides in Pakistan

Abstract

Cotton is cash crop of Pakistan and sucking insect pests are serious issue especially in early cotton season. To cope with the issue, a field experiment was conducted to investigate the post emergence effectiveness of two seed and two soil applied insecticides on populations’ development of sucking insect pests in cotton. The seed applied insecticides i.e. Imidacloprid (Confidor 70 WS) and Thiamethoxam (Actara 70 WS) were applied to the seed before sowing. Two granular insecticides i.e. Aldicarb (Temik 10 G) and Carbaryl (Sevin 10 D) were applied in furrows with a modified applicator that was calibrated to deliver the desired rate. The results showed that all the tested insecticides were very effective in controlling the targeted sucking insect pests i.e. thrips, whiteflies and jassids as compared to untreated cotton. Conversely, the seed applied insecticides i.e. Imidacloprid and Thiamethoxam showed more effectiveness compared to soil applied granular insecticides i.e. Aldicarb and Carbaryl in reducing sucking pests’ populations. Such systemic insecticides applied as treated seed can be present in sufficient quantity in germinating plants leading to toxicity to pests, and helpful for safety of natural enemies. The population trends of the three principal sucking insect pests namely thrip, whitefly and jassid were varied significantly over the study months thereby indicating that the population build up was favoured by certain factors. Consequently, the use of seed applied insecticides can be a major component to put into practice in the integrated pest management technology of cotton.