Monitoring of pest population in interplanted tomatoes

Crop monitoring is the continually on-going surveillance to detect the presence of a pest or disease at the very early stages of development of the disease or pest population, before economic damage has occurred. Timely information about the various pests occurrence in the glasshouses can minimize loss percentage. The present research work indicates that evaluation of the pests on weekly basis can help grower to control insects and pests and decide them to apply biological agents according to the population of pests. The important findings of the research work are regarding transfer of bio-control form main crop to interplanted crop. The natural transfer of the biological agents from main crop to interplanted crop in the early stages of plant growth was quite satisfactory but later there is a stage when population of bio-control start reducing and grower should think to apply the new bio-control. Therefore during interplanting cost of bio-control can be minimized in early stages with no application of new bio-control.