Effect of trap colour, height and placement around trees in capture of mango fruit flies.
Sarada G., Maheswari T. U., Purushotham K.
Author Affiliation: Department of Entomology, S.V. Agricultural College, Tirupati - 517 502, Andhra Pradesh, India.
Journal of Applied Zoological Researches 12 : 108-110
Abstract : An experiment was conducted in mango orchard to evaluate the different coloured plastic open pan traps viz., yellow, white, blue, orange, red and green as attractants for fruit flies such as Bactrocera dorsalis, B. correcta and B. zonata in three replications at S.V. Agricultural College, Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh, India, during 2000. During the same year another two experiments were conducted with these open pan traps by planning them at different heights (0, 1.0, 1.5 and 2.0 metres) above the ground and at different locations in the orchard. An open pan of 60 cm diameter with 7.5 cm depth, along with 0.1% methyl eugenol attractant was used for the purpose. Significantly more number of flies were attracted to white (16.953 flies/trap) and yellow (15.317 flies/trap) coloured traps followed by green, orange, red and blue, respectively. Lowest number of flies were attracted to blue colour. Traps placed on the ground caught significantly more number of flies (12.433 flies/trap) next followed by 1.0 m, 2.0 m and 1.5 m, respectively. Traps in the periphery of the orchard attracted more number of flies (945 flies) compared to the traps in the centre (561 flies) of the orchard. These findings would be useful in monitoring fruit flies and for development of an integrated pest management programme for mango trees.