The entomopathogenic fungus, Metarhizium

Moniliales) is a ubiquitous natural inhabitant of soil and biological control agent for several soil-dwelling insect pests including scarabs (3, 5). The efficacy and survival of Metarhizium anisopliae in soil has been examined by applying inoculum in the form of conidia (2, 6, 7) and conidia and dry mycelial particles (1, 4, 5) for the control of brown plant hopper, black bug and scarab grubs. Several techniques for mass production of entomopathogenic hyphomycetes are available, mostly designed to yield infective conidia. However, a meager information is available on various media for mycelial production. M anisopliae was grown all various liquid shaked media (Krueger et al., 1992) viz., Sabouraud dextrose yeast extract (SOY)-(peptone