Cotton Mealy Bug, Phenacoccus Solenopsis Tinsley – A Review

Mealy bug, Phenacoccus solenopsis Tinsley is a serious pest of cotton limiting the production and quality of fibre and lint. It is a polyphagous pest and multiply on different hosts like field crops, horticultural, fruit, vegetable and ornamental plants. They suck a large amount of sap from leaves and stems depriving plants of essential nutrients showing the symptoms like retarded growth, late opening of bolls and total drying of the plant. The yield losses due to the pest are estimated upto 50 per cent. Mealy bugs are cottony in appearance, small, oval, soft-bodied sucking insects covered with white mealy wax, which makes them difficult to eradicate. An individual mealy bug survived for 25–38 days. Effective control of the pest can be achieved through an integrated pest management approach. Field sanitation, uprooting of infested plants, dusting of methyl parathion 2 per cent or spraying of profenophos 50 EC or chlorpyriphos 25 EC or quinalphos 25 EC help to reduce the pest population. Aenasius bambawalei Hayat, Anagyrus kamali Mani, Cryptolaemus montrouzieri (Mulsant), Chrysoperla carnea (Stephens), Verticillium lecanii (Zimmermann) and Beauveria bassiana (Vuillemin) are the effective biological control agents in managing the infestation of the pest.