Influence of biophysical characters of coconut and oil palm on rugose spiraling whitefly, Aleurodicus rugioperculatus Martin

Abstract

A study was carried out on biophysical characters of coconut and oil palm located in different villages of West and East Godavari districts to see their effect on infestation of rugose spiraling whitefly, Aleurodicus rugioperculatus Martin. The biophysical leaf characters viz., leaflet colour, number of leaflets/leaf, leaflet length (cm), leaflet width (cm), leaflet thickness (mm) and trichomes/cm2, etc., were studied. It was observed that among all the biophysical characters only two characters viz., length of the leaflet in both coconut (0.923) and oil palm (0.952) exhibited significant positive correlation with pest infestation and thickness of the leaflet in coconut (-0.870) and oil palm (-0.892) showed significant negative correlation whereas leaflet width in case of oil palm (0.978) was found significantly positively correlated with the rugose whitefly infestation.