Impact of elevated temperature and carbon dioxide on insect performance indices of Spodoptera litura fabricius Sharma Smriti*, Kooner Rubaljot, Sandhu Sikander Singh, Arora Ramesh1 Department of Entomology, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana-141 004, Punjab, India 1Eternal University, Baru Sahib, Sirmour-173 101, Himachal Pradesh, India *Corresponding author's E-mail: smritisharma80@pau.edu
Online published on 26 October, 2018. Abstract Effect of rise in minimum temperature (4 & 5°C) and carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration (400 & 500 ppm) was studied on food consumption and nutritional indices of Spodoptera litura on cabbage. The food consumption, consumption index (CI) and approximate digestibility (AD) showed a respective increase of 20, 8.9 and 4.7 per cent with elevated CO2 concentrations while efficiency of conversion of ingested food (ECI), efficiency of conversion of digested food (ECD), relative consumption rate (RCR), larval weight gain and pupal weight decreased by 8.50, 27, 26.6, 24.59 and 20.97 per cent respectively. Food consumption, CI, AD, ECI and pupal weight values increased by 43.23, 50.83, 22, 19.66 and 11.93 per cent with increase in minimum temperature by 5°C whereas ECD, RCR and larval weight gain decreased by 20.28, 35.89 and 25.16 per cent. Present studies indicated that under elevated temperature and CO2 regimes, the damage caused by S. litura on crops would increase. Top Keywords Spodoptera litura, temperature, carbon dioxide, food consumption, nutritional indices. Top |