Seasonal incidence of banana pseudostem weevil, Odoiporus longicollis (Olivier) (Coleoptera: Curculionidae).

Banana (Musa spp.) is the fifth largest agricultural commodity in the world trade after cereals, sugar, coffee and cocoa. India leads the world in an area of 830.5 million hectare with total production of 29,780 thousand tonnes and is fourth in productivity 35.88 MT/ha (NHB, 201011). It is the richest source of energy and about an acre of banana yields 1million calories of energy (Madhava Rao, 1984). Banana is the main source of carbohydrates being rich in vitamins (A, B, C and D) containing larger amount of potash, phosphorus, calcium and iron than an apple or an orange (Roy and Sharma, 1952). About 19 pests are found associated with banana in India from planting to harvesting (Padmanaban et al., 2002). However in Bihar, banana face great set back due to attack of scarring beetle and pseudostem weevil (Sen and Prasad, 1953). Of these the banana pseudostem weevil, Odoiporus longicollis Olivier (Curculionidae: Coleoptera) has been recognized as the major key pest of banana in Bihar (Tiwari, 1971). The density is high from late May to June and from late September to mid October that cause heavy damage (Luo et al. 1985). In Bihar, this pest activity is high from February November (Prasad and Singh, 1988). However, temperature, sunshine, rainfall, relative humidity and wind speed are the chief weather parameters that largely direct the activity of a given species of insect. The interaction between pest activity and abiotic factors helps in deriving at predictive models that aids in forecast of pest incidence.