To understand the impact of various climatic factors on the occurrence and abundance of hoppers infesting mango, a study was carried out at Horticulture Farm, B. A. College of Agriculture, Anand Agricultural University, Anand during the year 2021-22. The incidence of mango hopper started gradually increased from 40th to 45th SMW corresponding to the 1st week of October to 1st week of November. During 46th SMW, hopper population slightly decreased but again, the incidence started increasing from 0.64 hopper/panicle in the 3rd week of November (47th SMW) to 5.41 hoppers/panicle in 1st week of January (1st SMW), after which it decreased to 5.04 and increased 5.88 hoppers/panicle in 2nd and 4th week of January, respectively. Following that, the population continued to grow and eventually reached its peak (12.41 hoppers/panicle) during 4th week of March (13th SMW). Correlation analysis with various weather parameters indicated that there was highly significant correlation between evapotranspiration and hopper population, while bright sunshine hours had significant positive correlation with the population of mango hopper. The evening relative humidity had highly significant but, negative correlation with population of mango hoppers. Many workers have reported the population dynamics of mango hopper in different regions of Gujarat but information pertaining to specific species Idioscopus nitidulus is lacking. Hence, the study on various climatic factors on the occurrence and abundance of hoppers infesting mango was conducted.

Mango hopper, population, Idioscopus nitidulus, SMW

The population of hoppers was found throughout the experimental period. The maximum population (12.41 hoppers/panicle) observed during 4th week of March (13th SMW). The correlation coefficient data reveled that evapotranspiration had highly significant and positive correlation and bright sunshine hours had significant positive correlation with the population of mango hopper. All this information, may be useful to develop region specific crop simulation dynamics models to predict and forecast the insect pest’s population so that mango growers/farmers can adopt the control measures well in advance to save the fruit crop being lost. Future research work must be done to make more accurate predictions in extremely variable temperatures even for a certain place, it is usually preferable to gather data from various geographic regions.

A.M. Baldaniya, N.B. Patel, Raghunandan, B.L. and Pavan, J.S. (2022). Influence of Weather Parameters on the Seasonal Incidence of Mango Hopper, Idioscopus nitidulus Walker in Middle Gujarat. Biological Forum – An International Journal, 14(3): 1531-1534.