Following the coordination made by the Institute's Public Relations, Dr. Fatemeh Shafaghi, Researcher of the Agricultural Entomology Research Department of the Iranian Research Institute of Plant Protection, on Friday, April 16, gave an interview to the Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA), which can be observed in the following link:
https://www.isna.ir/news/1400012715345/
Fatemeh Shafaghi stated that the Heliothis species causes the most damage to chickpea fields and is a key pest of this product. This pest besides Iran has spread across Europe and some middle east countries Including Syria and Turkey. In Iran, this species is active in most regions, especially in the provinces of Ilam, Hamedan, Kermanshah, Lorestan, Kurdistan, East and West Azerbaijan.
She continued: "Damage caused by Heliotis species in chickpea fields is important and sometimes very severe. In general, an integrated management method is recommended to be more successful in the control of this pest.
Shafaqi further explained: In agricultural management, autumn planting, early planting of chickpeas and changing the planting date from spring and winter to autumn always increases yields and reduces damage. Also, with early spring sowing, although the pest population and the percentage of infested pods increases, but the yield of the crop also increases, because the yield of chickpeas is strongly influenced by environmental factors such as humidity and ambient temperature, which is related to the planting time and the period of growth of the plant. According to her, research has shown that increase in planting density also increases the population and the damage of this pest.
She added that: "Deep plowing after harvesting the crop in order to destroy the winter nests of the pest in the soil, winter water ice to remove overwintering pupae, weed control, use of pheromone traps to track the pest, population monitoring to determine the timing of biological and chemical control is also recommended to control this pest. To track the pest and to determine the control time, use of pheromone traps before the appearance of the pest, preferably at the germination stage of chickpeas is also recommended. The installation height of the traps should be equal to the height of the chickpea plants and the number of traps should be 1-2 traps/ ha.
"For successful biological control of the pest, we need accurate tracking and monitoring of the pest, because parasitoid bees parasitize the larvae of older pests," she said. In this regard, the release of 1000 female bees (Habrobracon hebetor Say)/ ha twice (10 days apart) is useful. It is also recommended to use the biological product Bt at sunset with the recommended dose.
In the end, she recommended: for chemical control of this pest, Indoxacarb (15% SC) at the rate of 200 ml/ ha, thiodicarb (80% DF) at the rate of 0.75 to 1 kg/ ha and lofenrone (5% EC) at the rate of 300 to 400 ml/ ha can be used in the form of integrated management.
