EVALUATION OF PHEROMONE DISPENSERS FOR ECO-FRIENDLY MANAGEMENT OF MANGO FRUIT FLYRepalle Naganna, D.M. Jethva and U. Venu GopalAbstract The fruit fly is a pest of quarantine importance and is difficult to manage. It has a great impact on agricultural and causes enormous damage to fruits and vegetables. For the management of mango fruit flies, the Methyl eugenol-based pheromone trap was used. The trap efficacy is most affected by different factors. Among them, the dispenser played a crucial role in attracting fruit flies. In this regard, our investigation on the evaluation of pheromone dispensers was carried out and the results revealed that all the treatments were attracted to the fruit flies. Though, significantly more fruit flies were captured in both the plywood block (418.26 fruit flies/trap/month), and softwood block (389.58 fruit flies/ trap/month), which were at par with each other. Whereas, the least fruit flies were captured in the coal block (225.55 fruit flies/trap/month). It can be concluded that the plywood and softwood block performed better in terms of the number of fruit flies captured in the field and these can be used as dispensers in fruit fly traps for the management of fruit flies. |