Studies of plant oils as surface protectants against pulse beetle,Callosobruchus chinensis(l.) in chickpea,Cicer arietinuml. in India

Abstract The plant oils groundnut, coconut, mustard, sesame, soybean and rapeseed used as surface protectants at 1, 3 and 5 ml/kg of seed to test their efficacy against C. chinensis on a variety of chickpea resulted in significantly less oviposition on treated than untreated seeds. Least oviposition (34.3 eggs) occurred on seeds treated with mustard oil at 5 ml/kg, less with coconut oil at 5 ml/kg (46.0 eggs) and 3 ml/kg (47.3 eggs). Minimum percentage adult emergence (0.5) occurred from mustard oil‐treated seeds at 5 and 3 ml/kg, followed by groudnut (7.6), soybean (16.7) and rapeseed (6.2) oils used at 1 ml/kg. All the test oils adversely effected hatching and development of embryos, resulting in further population suppression. Seeds showed only 0.5% damage when treated with mustard oil at the rate of 5 and 3 ml/kg, and rapeseed at 5 ml/kg. Oil treatments did not adversely effect seed germination.