Temporal modeling for forecasting of the incidence of litchi stink bug using ARIMAX analysis

The litchi, Litchi chinensis Sonn. is an important sub-tropical evergreen fruit crop. Among various insect pests of litchi, stink bug, Tessaratoma papillosa (Drury) is a major one causing extensive damage in Mizoram. The forecasting model to predict stink bug incidence in litchi was developed by ARIMAX model of weekly casesand weather factors. In exploring different prediction models by fitting covariates to the time series data, model ×(mean maximum and minimum temperature, morning and evening relative humidity and rainfall) was found bestmodel for predicting the stink bug incidence; all covariates were found significant predictors except evening RH, which did not have any significant covariates as predictor of stink bug incidence.