Influence of meteorological factors on trap catches and incidence of pink bollworm, Pectinophora gossypiella (Saunders) on Bt cotton

The pink bollworm incidence and adult male moth trap catches were monitored throughout the cropping period for four years from 2017-2021 on Bt cotton (KCH-14K59) at University of Agricultural Sciences, Raichur. The pink bollworm male moth activity (95 moths/trap) was more during the month of December month (49th SMW) with the highest larval incidence (25.67 larvae/ 20 bolls) on green bolls during the month of February (6th - 9th SMW). The correlation matrix indicating relationship between the weekly mean moth catches, larval incidence and meteorological variables from 2017 to 2021 exerted negative association with mean of maximum and minimum temperature, rainfall, morning and afternoon relative humidity. However, the influence of all these whether parameters was found to be highly significant. When the data was subjected to Multi Linear Regression analysis, the results revealed that 78.70 per cent of mean pheromone trap catches (R2 = 0.787) and 92 per cent of mean larval incidence (R2 = 0.92) was negatively influenced by minimum temperature.