Cultural management

  • ETL: 8 egg masses/100 m row
  • Use of light trap to monitor and kill the attracted adult moths
  • Set up the sex pheromone trap @ 12/ha to monitor the activity of the pest and to synchronise the pesticide application, if need be, at the maximum activity stage
  • Removal and destruction of egg masses in castor and cotton crops
  • Removal and destruction of early stage larvae found in clusters that can be located easily even from a distance
  • Collection and destruction of shed materials
  • Hand picking and destruction of grown up caterpillars
  • Spraying nuclear polyhedrosis virus at 1.5 x 1012 POB per ha in evenings.
  • Spraying of insecticides should be done either in the early morning or in the evening and virus in the evening.
  • Use of poison bait pellets prepared with rice bran 12.5 kg, jaggery 1.25 kg, Carbaryl 50% WP 1.25 kg and water 7.5 litres. This bait can be spread in the fields in the evening hours so that the caterpillars coming out of the soil will feed and get killed.
  • Castor as an ovipositional trap crop against S. litura: egg masses, gregarious larvae of S. litura on castor should be removed once in a week and destroyed.