Bioefficacy of Different Plant Extracts Against Melon Fruit Fly Zeugodacus cucurbitae (Coquillet) in Zucchini at Bharatpur, Nepal

Abstract

The management of fruit fly is simply through chemicals, which have hazardous impact on human health and environment. So, the present study on "Bioefficacy of different plant extracts agains fruit fly in zucchini" was carried out at Bharatpur-11, Chitwan, Nepal from February 13 to May 18, 2020. The experiment was laid in Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) consisting four replications and five different treatments namely: 1) Neem leaf extracts, 2) Parthenium leaf extracts, 3) Garlic clove extracts, 4) Chilli fruit extracts and 5) Untreated control. All treatments were applied 40 days after transplanting and repeated 3 times at 10 days interval. For treatments, the extracts from each botanical were diluted with water in 1:5 ratio then applied with the help of hand sprayer. Data were taken after 3rd, 6th and 9th days of each treatment application. The result showed that Neem leaf extracts reduced adult fruit fly population by 64% over control. This was followed by parthenium leaf extracts (49.6%), garlic clove extracts (43.0%) and chilli fruit extracts (37.0%), respectively. Similarly, minimum flower drop (22.3%) and fruit damage (19.5%) were also observed on neem leaf extract treated plots as compared to all other treatments. The neem leaf extract also give highest marketable yield (15.4 mt/ha). For monitoring of fruit fly population, cue lure trap were installed at corner of the field, which show the maximum number of fruit flies (n = 41) was recorded at an average temperature of about 26.9 °C. During our research, it was found that fruit fly preferred more young and immature zucchini fruits as compared to mature one. The results of this experiment revealed that botanicals could be used as option of synthetic pesticides for the management of melon fruit flies that would render health benefit to human beings and friendly to environment. Among all botanicals neem leaf extracts performed best with regards to all parameters.