Department of Agricultural Entomology, Centre for Plant Protection Studies, Tamil Nadu Agricultural Unviersity, Coimbatore - 641 003, Tamil Nadu, (India).
1Present Address: National Research Centre tor Cashew, Shanthigodu, Puttur, (D.K.)-574 202, Karnataka, (India).
The tender and hardened (matured) shoots of cashew were evaluated along with tender and hardened shoots of neem for oviposition and feeding preference for the neem mosquito bug, Helopeltis antonii Sign, under choice test. In spite of relatively high moisture content, total sugar, and protein, and low phenol and tannin estimated in tender and hardened shoots of cashew than neem, the latter was preferred very significantly than cashew. The percentage of total eggs i.e., 71.0 to 78.6 were laid on shoots of neem, irrespective of its phenological stages. Among different phenological stages of cashew, tender shoots were highly preferred, whereas the matnred shoots were very much least preferred both for oviposition and feeding. This indicated the presence of strong deterrency factor to be exploited as a botanical insecticide. But, no such deterreney was observed in matured shoots of neem.
