APPROXIMATE NUMBER OF ANNUAL FIELD GENERATIONS OF PINK BOLLWORM, PECTINOPHORA GOSSYPIELLA (SAUNDERS)

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Faculty of Agriculture, Ain-Shams University, Cairo, Egypt

2 Plant Protection Research Institute, Agricultural Research Centre, Dokki, Giza, Egypt

Abstract

Field trials were carried out to estimate the number and duration of cotton bollworm, Pectinophora gossypiella (Saunders) field genera­tions during three seasons (1993, 1994 and 1995) at Gharbia & Kafr El-Sheikh Governorates and two seasons (1993 & 1 994) for Beheira Gov­ernorate, to facilitate the graphical estimation for the population cycles in each locality separately. It appears that reliable appearance of Pectin­ophora gossypiella moths took place during March, April and May thus forming the suicidal emergence. This is mainly due to the fact that this insect is oligo-phagous in addition to the emergence of moths at that time took place in the absence of favorable plant stage of cotton. Accordingly, this emergence is regarded as suicidal. The weekly numbers of captured pink bollworm moth determined by sex pheromone traps in­dicate that the first emergence period demonstrated unreliable changes in the population cycles of moths, while the second period underwent four obvious peaks of four overlapping generations in the three tested localities.