Bio-efficacy and Dynamics of Flonicamid 50 WG in Rice and Basmati

Insect pests pose major threat to the rice production and amongst these, brown plant hopper, Nilaparvata lugens (Stal) and whitebacked planthopper, Sogatella furcifera (Horvath) are the major culprit for huge economic crop losses of rice. The efficacy of newer insecticide flonicamid (Ulala 50 WG) against these insect pests with an aim of least disturbance to ecosystem and compared with the checks pymetrozine (Chess 50 WG) and imidacloprid was evaluated. The insecticides were applied when population exceeded economic threshold level (ETL) of 5 planthoppers per hill. The results revealed that flonicamid @ 75 g ai ha⁻¹ for the management of planthoppers in rice/basmati was statistically at par with the check pymetrozine applied @ 150 g ai ha⁻¹ but significantly superior to imidacloprid @ 25 g ai ha⁻¹.