Field efficacy of entomofungal pathogens against sorghum stem borer Chilo partellus (Swinhoe) Ramanujam B.*, Japur Krishna, Poornesha B. ICAR-National Bureau of Agricultural Insect Resources H.A. Farm post, Bellary Road, Bengaluru, 560024 *Email: bonamramanujam58@gmail.com
Online published on 27 July, 2018. Abstract The field experiment was carried out to assess the efficacy of four isolates of entomofungal pathogens of Beauveria bassiana (Bb-5a, Bb-23 and Bb-45) and Metarhizium anisopliae (Ma-35) against sorghum stem borer, Chilo partellus (Swinhoe) during kharif 2015 and 2016 at the ICAR-National Bureau of Agricultural Insect Resources (NBAIR), Attur Farm, Yelhanka, Bengaluru. All the tested fungal isolates showed suppression of damage and the pooled data revealed lesser deadhearts (6.4–11.8%), stem tunnelling (3.51–7.4 cm/plant), galleries (0.3–1.3 no./plant) and exit holes (0.43–1.62 no./plant) compared to untreated control, which showed 18.4% deadhearts, 9.61 cm stem tunnelling/plant, 1.9 galleries/plant and 2.02 exit holes/plant. Amongst the four isolates tested, Bb-23 and Bb-5a revealed significantly superior effect in lowering the incidence of deadhearts, stem tunnelling, galleries and exit holes, with higher yield of 11.61 and 11.52 q/ha respectively. Top Keywords Stem borer, Chilo partellus, entomofungal pathogens, Beauveria bassiana, Metarhizium anisopliae, deadhearts, stem tunnelling, galleries, exit holes, grain yield. Top |