Biophysical mechanisms of resistance to brinjal shoot and fruit borer, Leucinodes orbonalis guenee in brinjal

An experiment was carried out with twenty brinjal genotypes at Mahatma Phule Krishi Vidhyapeeth, Rahuri (MS) to see the effect of biophysical characters of plants on the infestation of shoot and fruit borer on different brinjal genotypes. It was observed that among the characters influencing shoot infestation trichome density exhibited strong and negative correlation (r = - 0.621) with respect to shoot infestation however, strong and positive correlation (r = 0.632) was found between shoot thickness and per cent shoot infestation. The fruit characters viz., length and diameter of fruit, pericarp thickness and fruit colour of brinjal genotypes screened had no clear cut impact on the preference of fruit borer, whereas, length of pedicel and length of calyx showed positive and highly significant correlation with fruit infestation (r = 0.4736 and 0.6156, respectively).