Department of Plant Pathology, CCS Haryana Agricultural University, Hisar-125004, Haryana. E-mail: mitharwal@hau.ernet.in.
Abstracts of the papers presented at the 16th Annual Convention and International Symposium of Indian Virological Society on “Management of Vector-Borne Viruses” at International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), Patancheru-502324, Hyderabad, India, February 7–10, 2006.
Leaf curl disease in cotton is caused by Cotton leaf curl virus (CLCuV) interacts with its vector, whitefly (Bemisia tabaci) in persistent manner. A single viruliferous whitefly is sufficient for the transmission of disease in number of plants within a short span of its life. The hot and humid climate in North India during the cotton-growing season is conductive for growth of the host and the vector, hence the wide occurrence of CLCuV in Haryana, Rajasthan and Punjab states. To find out the correlation among the disease incidence and vis-à-vis the weather parameters and insect vector population an experiment was carried out at the Cotton Research Area at CCSHAU, Hisar during the crop season of 2004 using commercially grown highly susceptible cultivar HS-6. The results revealed that the CLCuV disease incidence had significant but negative correlation with relative humidity (morning, evening and mean) and maximum temperature. A strong positive correlation was found between whitefly population and CLCuV disease incidence. However, significant correlation could not be established among different weather parameters and whitefly population individually. A significant multiple correlations existed among all weather parameters and individually with CLCuV disease incidence and the whitefly population.
