Population Monitoring of Cotton Bollworm Moth with Sex Pheromones in Punjab, India

Cotton bollworms, American bollworm, Helicoverpa armigera (Hubner), spiny bollworm Earias insulana (Boisduval), spotted bollworm, Earias vittella (Fabricius) and pink bollworm, Pectinophora gossypiella (Saunders) are major pests of cotton in Punjab. An investigation on the influence of weather parameters on the pheromone trap catches of cotton bollworms adults was undertaken in five district of Punjab during 2009. The specific sex pheromone traps were used and fixed at appropriate height in each locality to monitor the adult population of all species mentioned above. The lures of traps were changed after an interval of 15 days and data were collected weekly. Male moths were captured by sleeve moth catch trap with a synthetic female sex pheromone in cotton fields. The meteorological observations were taken weekly and also took the temperature, relative humidity, rainfall data, and evaporation for the year 2009. The rainfall and evaporation had no significant correlation with the adult emergence of all the bollworms. Morning relative humidity in all the case found effective and positively correlated with the trap catches. The emergence of tobacco caterpillar adults were positive correlated with maximum temperature as compared to others caterpillar.