Symptoms of damage

• Buds, flowers and young pods with boreholes and presence of slug like caterpillar.
• Larval entry hole on the pod is plugged with excreta.

Identification of the pest

• Larva - pale green or yellow with a red line and short black hairs on the body.
• Adult - butterfly is blue, medium sized with 5 black spots in the hind wings and two black spots in the inner margin.

Management of pod borer complex

• ETL 10% affected parts
• Deep summer ploughing in 2-3 years to eliminate quiescent pupa.
• Early sowing, short duration varieties.
• Avoid closer plant spacing.
• Grow tall sorghum as comparison crop to serve as biological bird perches
• Collect and destroy larvae and adults to the extent possible
• Install pheromone traps at a distance of 50 m @ 5 traps/ha for each insect pest.
• Install Bird perches @ 50/ha.
• Setting of light traps (1 light trap/5 acre) to kill moth population.
• Control is achieved by releasing of Trichogramma chlionis at weekly intervals @1.5 lakh/ha/ week for four times.
• Conserve green lacewing, predatory stink bugs, spider, ants
• Application of NPV 250 LE /ha with teepol 0.1% and Jaggery 0.5% thrice at 10 – 15 days interval commencing from flowering stage. (Note: Insecticide / Ha NPV spray should be applied when the larvae are in early stage).
• Bt @ 600 g, neem oil/ pungum oil 80 EC @ 2ml/lit
• Spray NSKE 5% twice followed by triazophos 0.05%.
• Apply any one of insecticides at 25 kg/ha quinalphos 4D, carbaryl 5D
• Spray insecticide Quinalphos 25 EC @ 1000 ml/ha.