EVALUATION OF THE HOST PREFERENCE OF CUCURBIT FRUIT FLY AGAINST DIFFERENT COMBINATIONS OF HYBRID CUCURBITS

Abstract

The study was conducted at the central Farm of Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural university, Dhaka to find out the evaluation of the host preference of cucurbit fruit fly against different hybrid cucurbit due to March to July, 2014. The experiment consisted of one factors as follows: T1 : Snake gourd + Bitter gorud + Wax gourd, T2 : Snake gourd, T3 : Snake gourd + Bitter gorud, T4 : Bitter gorud, T5 : Bitter gorud + wax gourd, T6 : Snake gourd + Wax gourd and T7 : Wax gourd. The single factor experiment was laid out in Randomized Complete Block Design with three replications. The highest number of bores per fruit (12.00), number of maggot per infested fruit (19.00) was recorded from T1 treatment and the lowest (2.00 and 4.00, respectively) was found in T4 treatment. The maximum percentage of infestation (48.00, 68.00 and 88.00%, respectively) was recorded from T2 treatment and minimum (12.00, 32.00 and 52.00 %, respectively) was recorded from T4 treatment at early, mid and late fruiting stage. The lowest weight of healthy and infested fruit ratio (1:0.62) was recorded from T4 treatment. The overall result revealed that among three cucurbits, snake gourd are more susceptible and highly preferred host to fruit fly and faced significantly severe damage compared to others. On the contrary, bitter gourd as less susceptible and less preferred host for fruit fly with significantly lower damage inflicted. On the other hand, most of the parameters bitter gourd and wax gourd combination of cropping was suitable against cucurbit fruit fly.