Influence of prevailing weather conditions on incidence of thrips on different solanaceous vegetables cultivation

The direct injury and the virus disease transmitted by thrips result in discoloration of tomato fruits and thus lower the quality of the fruits with yield losses up to 23.7 per cent (Kagezi et al., 2001). [...]population dynamics is an important tool for the developing pest management strategies against this pest. Periods of no incidence, initiation of incidence, low incidence, peak incidence etc. carry important information to decide the time for adoption of management tactics. [...]correlations between thrips incidence and the weather parameters i.e. temperature, humidity, rainfall and rainy days have been worked out by using SPSS 16 statistical software for management strategies. The correlation study showed that the population of thrips exhibited significant positive association with maximum temperature (r = 0.54·), which indicates thrips population increases with the increase in temperature (Table 1). The experimental results revealed that maximum temperature (r= 0.43·) and sunshine hrs (r = 0.67··) showed considerable positive impact on the population of thrips infesting tomato leaves, whereas, maximum and minimum relative humidity (r=-0.54··, -0.90··) had direct negative effect on the population of thrips (Table. 1).