EFFECT OF INTERCROPPING ON INCIDENCE OF PESTS AND PREDATORS IN CAULIFLOWER FIELDS

Abstract

An experiment was conducted in the central experimental field of SAU, Dhaka, Bangladesh during the period from November, 2019 to February, 2020 to evaluate the effect of intercropping on incidence of pests and predators in cauliflower fields. The experiment was laid out in Randomized Complete Block Design replicated with three times. Seven treatments were tested for the study which are intercropped with tomato (T 1 ii ), marigold (T 2 ), garlic (T 3 ), radhuni (T 5 ), fenugreek (T 6 ) and control (sole cauliflower) (T 7 ). The results showed that, the highest insects pests was found in control field and lowest insect incidence was found in the field intercropped with coriander. Among the insect pests, whitefly was the major and found maximum number in control cauliflower field as well as intercropped fields with tomato, marigold, coriander, radhuni and fenugreek. In case of arthropod predator, field spider was major and found in control cauliflower and integrated with tomato, marigold, garlic, radhuni and fenugreek. Considering the pests reduction, T 4 performed best and reduced the number of aphid, whitefly, stripped beetle, leaf miner and diamond back moth over control (43.89%, 61.15%, 75.93%, 64.66% and 51.91%, respectively). It also reduced percent plant infestation over control (57.57%) and increased the number of predator arthropods like lady bird beetle and field spider over sole cauliflower (103.00% and 245.12%, respectively). T 4 also showed the best performance in terms of plant height, card length, card diameter and yield of cauliflower (36.45 cm, 18.23 cm, 15.37 cm and 24.71 t/ha, respectively). From this study, it can be concluded that cauliflower intercropping with coriander showed the antagonistic effect to the insect pests of cauliflower and also showed positive effect on the yield of cauliflower than the sole cultivation.