Department of Spices and Plantation Crops, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore - 641 003, Tamil Nadu, India.
Cotton ‘White Gold’ is an important commercial crop. The major threat to cotton production is its higher susceptibility to pests especially bollworms. Globally, the maximum amount of pesticides was consumed by cotton alone. But nowadays, chemical pesticides miserably failed to check the menace of bollworms in cotton system. Bollworms have developed resistance to most of the potent pesticides. To combat this problem, transgenic Bt cotton has been developed which evokes inbuilt resistance in host and offers protection against bollworms. Application of insecticides in Bt cotton should be based on scouting and thresholds. Bt endotoxin, the insecticidal crystal cry protein efficiency differs on various factors like varieties, season, crop age, environment and management practices like amount of nitrogenous fertilizers applied etc. Bt cotton was found to be safer to human and animal kind.
