Study on the Botanical Acaricides in the Control of Aculops lycopersici Infested Tomato under Laboratory and greenhouse Conditions

Aculops lycopersici (TRM) is an important tomato crop pest. Bioassay on registered doses of 0.75, 1.5, 2.5 ppm of GC-mite, Biomite, and Neem EC 1.8% botanical pesticides were conducted in laboratory respectively. One liter stock solution of each pesticide was used to prepare different doses (0.1-0.9 ppm) and bioassay was conducted using tomato infested leaf submerged for 5 seconds with 10 replications. Distilled water was used in control treatment. Mortality of Aculops lycopersici was determined after 24 hours for each dose on TRM and analysis was done by POLO-PC software. According to LC50 determined, minimum dose toxicity recorded was 0.22 ppm for GC-mite which shows 71% reduction compared with the registered dose. Least dose slop recorded was 1.15±0.17 for 1.79 ppm of Neem. Effective dose of each treatment was compared with 20% lower and higher than the dose obtained when 10 TRM were observed in 1cm2 in middle part of lower and upper tomato leaf in the greenhouse. Live TRM population was counted by random collection of 12 leaves from each treatment and moving mites were counted in 1cm2 area on both the sides of leaf one day before and 3,7,14 days after treatment with stereo microscope. Highest mean of mite density recorded was 100.33±17.86 in 1 cm2 on the lower side of the leaf which was two times of the upper side of the leaf. Mean percent mortality on the 3rd day showed significant differences among the treatments although the effect of the treatments at 7th and 14th day caused 83.12% to 99.75% mortality and was not significantly different (p<0.05) except for biomite treatment. The results show that all the doses effectively controlled active TRM and can be substituted with the hazardous acaricides for production of organic tomato under greenhouse conditions.