POPULATION DYNAMICS OF TRIBOLIUM CASTANEUM (HERBST) IN DIFFERENT ABIOTIC CONDITIONS ON STORED FIG FICUS CARICA

Stored products infestation by insect pests is a serious issue all over the world as this causes severe threat to the quantity and quality of food commodities. Insect pests attack to stored grains may cause significant weight loss, reduced seed variability and nutritional losses. A variety of insect pests are injurious to stored grains and their infestation is enhanced by poor storage conditions and environmental factors particularly temperature and relative humidity. Current experiment was conducted to check the effect of modified abiotic conditions on the mortality and infestation rate of two most destructive insect pests of stored products i.e Tribolium castaneum (Herbst) and Oryzaephilus.surinamensis. Three levels of temperatures (20, 30 and 400C) with 50 and 70% relative humidity were used during experimentation. Different abiotic conditions were ensured using incubator (SANYO incubator, MIR-254). The test insect species were exposed for 30 and 60 days to different combinations of temperatures and relative humidity. The experiment was performed on sterilized fig and Completely Randomized Design (CRD) with three replicates for each treatment was used. The observed data was subjected to Analysis of Variance using statistix 8.1software at 5% level of significance. The results of the study showed that maximum mean mortality (55.00%) after exposure period of 30 days and (65.00%) after exposure period of 60 was found for Tribolium castaneum at 50% relative humidity with 400C whereas for Oryzaephilus.surinamensis maximum mean mortality (56.66%) and (73.33%) was obtained after exposure period of 30 and 60 days respectively. Data regarding infestation showed that maximum mean infestation rate for Tribolium castaneum was (87.50%) at 70% R.H with 300C and minimum infestation rate (45.83%) was noticed at 50% with 400C while for Oryzaephilus.surinamensis maximum and minimum infestation rate with mean value of (89.16%) and (55.83%) were observed at 70% R.H with 300C and 50% R.H with 400C respectively. The results of the study demonstrated that modified abiotic conditions can be successfully used in integrated pest management programs as an alternative to synthetic chemicals in stored products protection against insect pests.