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Farmer participatory research (FPR) is an approach, which involves encouraging farmers to engage in experiments in their own fields to learn, adopt new technologies and spread them to other farmers. Mountages play a crucial role in deciding the quality of the cocoon. Even after raising the healthy and robust silkworms, incorrect mounting method and use of improper mountages lead to inferior quality of cocoons. The present study was conducted with improved mountages and mounting techniques to enhance the quality of cocoons through farmer participatory research. While comparing the quality of cocoons produced in the three types of mounting techniques, the defective cocoon percentage is 19.17% in the plastic mountages where self mounting was adopted, 15.07% defective cocoons in the plastic mountages where worms were picked up and mounted and 7.94% defective cocoons where rotary mountages were used. Rotary mountages helps in uniform distribution of the worms to all the cells with less silk wastage as floss and slight increase in single cocoon weight. The good cocoon percentage was significantly higher (91.88%) in rotary mountages and the cocoons were uniform in shape and size. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The studies on tritrophic relation of mealy bug and its entomophages on different mulberry varieties revealed, that the varieties highly influenced the Maconellicoccus hirsutus infestation, population build up and also the third trophic entomophages. Variety MR2 was less infested in all the season followed by S36 and K2 while infestation was more in V1. The population of mealy bug was also found higher in V1 followed by S36 and K2 in the favourable seasons. Lowest population of mealy bug was observed in MR2. The entomophages highly preferred the pest in variety S36 followed by MR, and TN local. The higher mealy bug infestation in V1 is due to the lesser preference of entomophages. The trichoines present on the young and unopened mulberry leaves were positively correlated with mealy bug population, Tukra incidence and entomophages population. The amino acid content and total soluble sugars were positively correlated with tukra incidence, mealy bug population and entomophages population. The protein content was negatively correlated with tukra incidence and mealy bug population but was positively correlated with the entomophages population. The phenol content was negatively correlated with tukra incidence , mealy bug population and entomophages population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The pink hibiscus mealybug, Maconellicoccus hirsutus (Green) (Hemiptera: Pseudococcidae) is a major sucking pest of mulberry, infests tender shoot and causes bunchy top which leads to retarded growth of the plants. The leaves in the infested shoots become unfit for young age silkworm rearing. Infestation of M. hirsutus is often associated with attendant ants and they help spreading of the pest besides protecting from natural enemies. Thus, a study on the association of ants with M. hirsutus and their influence on the predatory fauna in mulberry gardens was carried out in southern Tamil Nadu. Four ant species viz. Monomorium indicum, Solenopsis geminata, Tapinoma sessile and Camponotus compressus were found to have association with the pink mealy bug in mulberry garden. Among the species, M. indicum was found predominant accounting for an average of 37.78 numbers per mealybug infested shoot whereas the rest of the species S. geminata (3.3), T. sessile (1.67) and C. compressus (0.56) were exhibited least association. The average mealy bug population was comparatively higher in ant attended colonies (61.22) than unattended ones (49.22). The population of predatory fauna decreased significantly (0.96) on ants association compared to the mealy bug infested shoots free from the ants (4.75) which indicates the deterring potentiality of the attendant ants. Destruction of the predominant M. indicum colonies in mulberry ecosystem could help increase the field activities of predatory fauna against M. hirsutus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rapaya mealybug, Paracoccus marginatus Williams Granara de Willink (Hemiptera: Pseudococcidae) is a polyphagous alien pest reported to infest over 80 plant species in India including number of agricultural and horticultural crops, ornamental plants, trees and weed species (Selvaraju and Sakthivel, 2011). Mulberry (Morus alba L.), the food plant of silkworm (Bombyx mori L.) is highly susceptible to this pest and its continued menace in Tamil Nadu after outbreak in 2009, poses threat to sericulture throughout the year (Sakthivel, 2013). The pest feeds on phloem sap of mulberry plants both from stem and leaf resulting in loss of moisture and decline in nutritional values. Growth of dense black sooty mould on leaves over the honey dew excreted by the pest makes them unfit to feed silkworm. Feeding papaya mealybug affected mulberry leaves adversely affects the economic traits of silkworm and silk yield (Sakthivel et al. 2011). Number of weed species in mulberry garden serves as alternate host to the papaya mealybug. From these weeds, the pest easily migrates to the new sprouts after each pruning and build up its population heavily on plant maturity (Sakthivel et al. 2012) which renders repeated incidence. Therefore, identification of weed species harbouring the papaya mealybug population in mulberry ecosystem could help to draw proper management strategies to prevent shifting of this pest from weeds to mulberry and vice versa. Occurrence of papaya mealybug on weed flora in mulberry garden was thus examined in monthly intervals by visual observation in three districts of Tamil Nadu viz Salem, Namakkal, Dharmapuri, [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]