Effect of Four Agro-botanical Extract in The Control of Insect Pest of Date Palm (Phoenix dectylifera L)

The conservation or storage of date palm fruit is a huge challenge to the producers and marketers because of insect pest infestation of the fruit. Insect are the major destructive agents during the storage period. This study tends to evaluate the efficacy of agro botanicals (rice husk ash, beans ash, ground nut ash and Melon ash) in the control of insect pest of date palm fruit. The study was carried out at pest management department of college of agriculture Mokwa between November and February 2023. The experiment contains five treatments (T1 - T5) T1 = 1200g of melon shell ash, T2= 1200g of rice chaff ash, T3 = 1200g of groundnut shell ash, T4 = 1200g of beans shell ash, T5 = no application replicated three times. An average of 1020g of dry date palm fruits were stored for about 3 months and evaluated at every two weeks to check the insect activities i.e. death of formation of holes as affected by the treatments. After the tenth week treatment 4 i.e. beans ash has the best score with a final weight of 750.45g and best sensory evaluation. Treatment 5 which is the control has the lowest score with final weight of 40g and one dead insect and production of two. The experiment also shows that all other treatments except the control were good in the prevention of insect infestation of the dry stored date palm fruit. The study established that agro botanicals are cheaper and safer alternatives for storing dry date palm fruits.