Diversity of Arthropods in Relation to Insecticide and Biopesticide Treatments in Okra Kaur Ramanpreet1, Singh Rajwinder1,*, Aulakh Randeep Kaur1 1Department of Zoology, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana, Punjab141004, India *Email: rajwinder-singh@pau.edu (corresponding author): ORCID ID 0000-0003-2802-6088
Online Published on 18 October, 2023. Abstract Present study was carried out during 2019 at the Vegetable Research Farm, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana to generate information on diversity of invertebrates in okra. Study revealed that okra crop was harboured by 27 invertebrate species belonging to 11 orders and 26 families. Of these, maximum belonged to order Hemiptera followed by Coleoptera. Higher values of Shannon-Wiener index (1.75, 1.84) and Simpson’s index (0.26, 0.17), respectively were recorded for both phytophagous arthropods and predators in untreated control plots. This is followed by neem/ other insecticides treated plots. Imidacloprid lowered the arthropod population. Occurrence of predators and phytophagous arthropods revealed a significant positive correlation with temperature (r=+0.37 to +0.99) and relative humidity (r=+0.04 to +0.80) except for few hemipterans and coleopterans. Top Keywords Okra, Arthropods, Insects, Diversity, Biopesticide, Insecticides, Neem, Phytophagous, Predators, Diversity indices, Population dynamics, Weather factors. Top |