Invitro studies on the management of whitefly Bemisia tabaci with Beauveria bassiana

Bioassays were conducted with three strains of an entomopathogenic fungus Beauveria bassiana against third nymphal instar of Bemisia tabaci on soybean cultivar JS-335 under laboratory conditions at 25± 2°C, 70±10% RH, 13 hr photophase, at the Biocontrol Research and Production Centre, Department of Entomology, College of Agriculture, JNKVV, Jabalpur during 2016–2017. The study revealed that the B. bassiana strain-S3 was the most effective at 168 hr after treatment. The mortality at 1.72x10⁹ spores/ml observed with very high, lower and very low upper fiducial limits (5.64x10⁷ and 5.24x 10, respectively) followed by Strain-2 (4.32x10⁸ and 5.20x 10¹⁸) and Strain-1 (1.40x10⁹ and 1.34x 10¹⁴). Among the doses 1x10¹² spores/ml recorded maximum mortality (60.00%) followed by 1x10¹⁰ spores/ml (46.67%) and 1x10⁸spores/ml (38.89%).