Varietal Preference of Whitefly (Bemisia Tabaci) in Pumpkin Cultivars

The book presents varietal preference of whitefly, Bemisia tabaci (Genn.) on eight different cultivars of pumpkin namely, Badyapati local-1, Arka Surjamukhi, HYP-1, NDPKH-1, Badyapati local-2, Midnapur local, NDPK-130, KPS-1. After research study, it seemed that the whitefly becomes relatively more (5.72/young leaf and 4.50/mature leaf), abundant when the temperature become high (37.200C) and becomes low with the onset of rainfall (1.85/young leaf) and (2.47/mature leaf). The variety Badyapati local-2 exhibits the lowest population build up on the basis of mean number of insects per leaf on both young and mature leaves. Other morphological characters such as length of leaf hair, number of cell/hair, thickness of leaf lamina have no significant effect on population build up. The highest population build up were exhibited on the variety HYP-1. It seems that, hairiness of leaf can be considered as a resistant character of pumpkin against the dreaded pest, Bemisia tabaci (Genn.)