Screening of Urdbean Cultivars Against Callosobruchus chinensis

Urdbean suffers quantitative and qualitative losses from the attack of pulse beetle, Callosobruchus chinensis during storage. A laboratory experiment was conducted to know the relative susceptibility of certain blackgram varieties to pulse beetle at Agricultural Research Station, Ghantasala, Andhra Pradesh during 2009 revealed that various factors were responsible for resistance or susceptibility to bruchids. Besides several common varieties, LBG 752 suffered more damage due to bruchids. LBG 611 was resistant with the lowest values recorded for oviposition preference (2.67 eggs/10 seeds), adult emergence (14.67/100 g seed), grain damage (1.67%), weight (0.76%), and germination (1.37%) losses. The urdbean varieties are to be improved through transferring a combination of morphological and biochemical traits associated with resistance to post-harvest insects either by conventional breeding methods or molecular techniques.