Efficacy of imidacloprid soil drenching against thrips and mealy bugs in grape

Thrips and mealy bugs are major insect pests in grape during tender growth and berry development stage, and losses are more pronounced during winter pruning. An experiment was conducted at Grape Research Station, Rajendranagar for management of thrips and mealy bugs in grape variety Thompson Seedless in a completely randomized block design with four replications and seven treatments in which efficacy of imidacloprid soil drenching was evaluated. It was observed that imidacloprid 70WG @ 0.45 g/l soil drenching at 20 and 40 days after fruit pruning was the most effective in reducing the number of thrips at 3rd (3.5), 10th (2.71), 20th (2.10) and 30th day (2.22 thrips) of treatment. Similarly, imidacloprid 70 WG (0.45 g/l) soil drenching at 20 and 40 days after fruit pruning recorded less number of mealy bugs, followed by imidacloprid 200 SL (1.5ml/l) at 20 and 40 days after pruning.