EFFECT OF UNJUSTIFIED USE OF NEW CHEMISTRY PESTICIDES ON POPULATION OF WHITEFLY BEMISIA TABACI GENN. AND NATURALLY EXISTING BENEFICIAL FAUNA OF COTTON IN PUNJAB, PAKISTAN

The present study was carried out at Lodhran (Punjab, Pakistan) against cotton whiteflyBemisia tabaci Genn. (Hemiptera: Aleyrodidae) in field of a farmer. Modern insecticides, relatively safer to the natural beneficial fauna, commonly available and used by the farmers, were selected. Experiment consisted on 7 pesticide treatments viz., buprofezin, fonicamid, spintoram, pyriproxyfen, diafenthiuron, acetamiprid, spirotetramid and a control where no action was taken at all. It is because there is limited number of staff in public sector who cannot provide technical advisory service to each farmer at his door step. Our farming community does not involve technical staff and don t bother about ETL and ethics of application. They start spraying and go on repeating it at a conventional time slag as a routine. The objective was to evaluate whether the unjustified use of these safer insecticides has any impact on population of pest and beneficial fauna under uncontrolled field condition. Two applications of the same set of treatments were made in RCBD without observing the economic threshold level ETL of the pest. The results revealed that all the pesticides not only decreased the pest population but also significantly reduced the population of beneficial fauna except IGRs (pyriproxyfen and buprofezin). IGRs treated plots had relatively less pest population.