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One of the most significant agricultural pests in Southeast Asia is Bactrocera dorsalis (Hendel). It is the most destructive pest in India, followed by B. zonata (Saunders) and B. correcta (Bezzi). Baits and sprays of conventional insecticides affect non-target beneficial fauna. For the management of this pest, sterile insect technique (SIT) has been proposed as an alternate and environmentally friendly method. The prerequisites for SIT, however, include biology and the mass rearing of fruit flies on semi-artificial diets. In this context, an attempt was made to investigate the biology of B. dorsalis on two novel hosts, Jamun and Sweet orange, as well as the development of a semi-synthetic diet. According to B. dorsalis biology, the egg, larval, and pupal periods on Jamun were 1.8±0.78, 7.6±0.51 and 8.9±0.87 days, respectively. Whereas, on sweet orange, the egg, larval, and pupal periods were 2.9±0.73, 8.7±0.82 and 9.8±0.78 days, respectively. Adult longevity of female files was more as compared to males. Banana powder based diet has yielded the highest egg hatchability (82.66±2.51%), pupal recovery (75.32±2.33%) and adult emergence (91.15±3.05%). This paper concluded that banana based diet was the best suitable larval diet for mass rearing B. dorsalis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mud crabs are common edible crustaceans, which are fished along the coasts of India. Scylla tranquebarica (Fabricius 1798), commonly called green crab is one of the most economically important portunid crab in India. The study was carried out to determine the sex ratio, maturation and spawning, gonadosomatic index, fecundity and egg diameter. Sex ratio of 1 female to 1.3 male gave good results. Size at first maturity was observed at 11 cm carapace width (CW) in males and 10 cm (CW) in females. The highest GSI values in males (6.17) and females (5.12) were observed in the month of October. The maximum number of eggs produced by the females was up to 5 million. The egg diameter was recorded in the range of 0.69 to 0.76 mm. The incubation period was 11-13 days. The hatching success average percentage was recorded as 80%. For the incubation and larval rearing of mud crab, Scylla tranquibarica, the optimum requirement of water temperature and salinity were recorded as 28°C and 30 ppt, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The incidence of Aleurodicus dispersus Russell (Hemiptera: Aleyrodidae) was surveyed in production fields of cotton, Gossypium hirsutum L., in Tamil Nadu, India, from December 2021 to April 2022. Plants sampled in the crops were winter and summer planted, 45–95 days past seeding, and in the flowering to boll development stages. Whitefly counts from the sampling yielded a range of 4.4 to 8.9 adults and nymphs per 3 leaves (sample unit). The nymphs and adults collected from the fields were taxonomically confirmed using taxonomic characteristics obtained by photographs of live and slide-mounted specimens. Identification was further confirmed by molecular techniques using the mitochondrial Cytochrome Oxidase subunit I gene (COI) universal primer-based polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification and sequencing. The resulting dendrogram, constructed using MEGA-X and analyzed using the maximum likelihood method, yielded a single clade with sub-lineages of the specimens collected in this survey. Overall, the mean (± SD) duration of the entire life cycle of A. dispersus collected was 43.9 ± 2.4 d. Mean (± SD) length x width the developmental stages were 283.8 ± 13.3 μm x 167.0 ± 4.5 μm for eggs, 335.7 ± 19.3 μm x 266.9 ± 25.7 μm for first instars, 473.8 ± 21.6 μm x 349.8 ± 21.3 μm for second instars, 774.4 ± 15.11 μm x 440.2 ± 5.8 μm for third instars, 881.1 ± 16.7 μm x 634.7 ± 5.2 μm for fourth instars, and 970.0 ± 9.1 μm x 836.9 ± 12.7 μm for adults. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current study compared the achievements of higher secondary level students before and during the COVID 19 pandemic in five subjects-English, Biology, Physics, Chemistry, and Mathematics. This study was conducted on higher secondary level students from Bodoland Territorial Region (BTR), Assam, India. Dichotomous variables like rural and urban, tribal and non-tribal are considered for sample collection. A stratified random sampling technique is used for data collection. When five subjects are considered as a unit, the Mahalanobis Distance (MD) is used to measure the difference in dynamical character of achievements. There is a significant difference in the achievement of students between pre-COVID 19 and during COVID 19 pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The investigation was carried out at the Department of Entomology, Odisha University of Agriculture and Technology, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India during rabi, 2021-22 at 29.46±2.59oC temperature and 38.66±6.52% relative humidity. The eggs of the fall armyworm, Spodoptera frugiperda (J. E. Smith) were dorso-ventrally flattened, pale green initially and later turned to golden yellowish and ultimately turned to black before hatching. The hatching percentage was 91.36±2.56. The larvae passed through six different instars having durations, 2.28±0.40, 2.18±0.27, 2.14±0.03, 2.20±0.35, 2.28±0.43 and 4.32±0.45 days of first, second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth instars, respectively. The mean incubation, larval, pre-puparial, puparial, pre-oviposition, oviposition and post-oviposition periods were 2.48±0.05, 16.52±0.94, 1.46±0.53, 7.34±0.42, 3.32±0.44, 2.36±0.46 and 4.88±0.20 days, respectively. The lengths of head capsules of first, second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth instar larvae, were 0.32±0.02, 0.40±0.02, 0.60±0.02, 0.87±0.01, 1.20±0.02 and 14.50±0.20 mm, respectively which was not studied before. Whereas, the breadths were 0.22± 0.02, 0.30±0.01, 0.50±0.02, 0.77±0.01, 1.11±0.04 and 1.98±0.02 mm, respectively. The percentage of adult emergence was 91.47±1.77%. The sex ratio of male: female was 1:1.46±0.04. The fecundity of gravid females was 1478.80±47.06 eggs/female. The adult longevity was 8.42±0.46 and 10.48±0.52 days in males and females, respectively. The total life cycle was completed in 32.00 to 37.00 days in males and 34 to 39 days in females on maize. The length of adult males and females across the wing expanse was 31.87±0.16 and 32.81±0.19 mm, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]