Insect Pests of Arid Fruit Crops: Practical Manual for Field Identification and Damage Symptoms

There are many reasons for low productivity of the arid fruits. Hot arid region are marked by abiotic limitations such as high temperature, high potential evapo- transpiration, low erratic rainfall, low soil fertility, poor quality of ground water, etc., which lead to poor crop growth and yield. Apart from the climatic limitations, the biotic factors like pest and diseases are also one of the limiting factor for crop production in hot arid ecosystem. The major pest of this area fruit fly, stone weevil, fruit borers, aphids, thrips, lemon butter fly, scales and chaffer beetles are major constraints which causing the considerable economic loss and increasing the cost of fruit production of rain fed farmers. Ber fruit fly (Carpomyia vesuviana) is the most destructive pest of ber. It contributing towards low yield and poor quality of fruits and it caused yield loss up to 80% under severe infestation. The severe incidence of fruit weevil (Aubeus himalayanus) has been recorded in arid region that caused considerable damage to ber fruit on Gola (28.8 %) and Seb (51.8 %) from tree sample and Gola (74.10) & Seb (89.80) in fallen fruits during December. In date palm, the scales, Parlatoria blanchardi and lesser date moth, Batrachedra amydraula are an important insect pest of date palm infesting leaves and fruits. The incidence of scale insect was found 6.46 per cm 2 of leaves and incidence of lesser date moth was around 16 to 20 %. Therefore, the highest fruit damage was recorded in the varieties Medjool (16.01%) followed by Khalas (14.54%) and Nagal (13.78%), whereas, lowest fruit damage was recorded in the varieties Zagloul, Medini and Zahidi as 1.43, 1.51 and 2.30 per cent due to lesser date moth