Ratnasudhakar T.

Newer Insecticides: Relative Toxicity to Tobacco Caterpillar, Spodoptera Litura Ratnasudhakar T.

The tobacco caterpillar, Spodoptera litura (Fabricius) is an important polyphagous pest, infesting crops of major economic importance. During the last 30 years, it has become an increasingly important pest on cotton, groundnut and mungbean. After intensive use of broad spectrum insecticides, S. litura populations have developed high levels of resistance to almost all conventional insecticides. Because of the widespread resistance, there is an urgent need for chemicals with different modes of action and those that do not select for cross resistance to conventional insecticides. Integrating new chemistries into insecticide rotation programmes should reduce selection pressure from a single product or products with similar chemistry and mode of action, thus prolonging the usefulness of all products in Integrated Pest Management. Insecticides with novel modes of action and insect growth regulators have attracted particular interest. This book therefore provides the degree of toxicity of selected novel insecticides and insect growth regulators against S. litura based on the mode of entry and would be highly useful to the post graduate students of entomology and plant protection workers