Population abundance and correlation of sucking insect pests and their natural enemies on different brinjal genotypes

To screen out the resistant brinjal genotype and to identify effective natural enemies of the sucking insect pests of brinjal an organic experiment was carried out in the Entomology Section, Agricultural Research Institute, Tarnab - Peshawar during 2016. Five brinjal genotypes namely Shamli hybrid, Local long, Black neelum, Local round and Purple long were tested. The experiment followed a randomized complete block design (RCBD) with three replications. Weekly data were recorded on the population densities of insect pests i.e. brinjal aphid, brinjal jassid, whitefly and natural enemies i.e. ladybird beetle and green lacewings. Results revealed that the overall mean density of brinjal aphid and brinjal jassid was significantly higher on genotype Local round, i.e. 4.89 and 4.68 individuals leaf-1 while significantly lower on Shamli hybrid i.e. 3.07 and 0.68 individuals leaf-1, respectively. A Significantly higher overall mean density of whitefly was recorded on genotype Local round (10.30 individuals leaf-1) while lower was recorded on Shamli hybrid (7.20 individuals leaf-1). The overall mean density of ladybird beetle and green lacewings was significantly higher on genotype Shamli hybrid, i.e. 1.96 and 2.96 individual leaf-1 whereas significantly lower on Local round i.e. 0.52 and 0.79 individuals leaf-1, respectively. Ladybird beetle correlated significantly negative with brinjal aphid and brinjal jassid whereas green lacewings showed a significant and positive correlation with brinjal aphid and whitefly hence, the use of a resistive genotype and natural enemies may be incorporated in an integrated pest management (IPM) program against sucking insect pests.