Effect of Entomopathogenic Fungi Against Brown Plant Hopper, Nilaparvata lugens (Stal.) (Hemiptera: Delphacidae) Infesting Rice

An investigation was undertaken with objective to study the relative efficacy of microbial insecticides viz. , Metarhizium anisopliae, Beauveria bassiana and Verticillium lecanii against rice brown plant hopper. Overall performance of various microbial treatments based on mean hopper population data, revealed that the treatment with M. anisopliae with conidial concentration 1 x 1010, 1 x 109 per ml was the most consistently effective and significantly superior over all other fungal treatments throughout the trial followed by B. bassiana 1 x 1010, 1 x 109 and V. lecanii in reducing the hoppers population. M. anisopliae is superior to B. bassiana and V. lecanii on 3 DAS and 7 DAS, whereas on 10 DAS, M. anisopliae 1 x 1010 and B. bassiana 1 x 1010 recorded 70-80 per cent reduction in survival population.