13/06/2025
Hands-on experience in the field! On June 12, 2025, I visited a sugar cane field and observed sugar cane pyrilla (Pyrilla spp.), gaining valuable insights into pest management in sugar cane crops.
✓ Scientific Name: Pyrilla perpusilla✓Family: Lophopidae
✓ Order: Homoptera
Host plants:Wheat, barley, oat, maize, sorghum, swank, sudan grass
:
1. It sucks phloem sap from leaves and excretes honeydew onto foliage, which results in fungal diseases.
2.This damages sugar yield and quality both directly and indirectly.
3. The active stages of the life cycles favor the underside of the leaf blades, particularly near midrib as resting and feeding sites.
4. They are inactive during early morning, evening and night, typically resting on the underside of the leaves. Between 10 to 3 pm they become very active and could be found on both sides of the leaf surfaces.
5. Poor yield is obtained due to poor growth of seed setts and difficulties in milling canes from affected plants.
6. Nymphs and adults suck sap from the leaves and can decrease sucrose content Due to desaping, leaves turn pale yellow and later on dry up.
7. Black mould interferes with photosynthesis and very little sugar is obtained due to utilization of sucrose.
8. Cane juice becomes high in glucose, turns insipid and if used for making ‘Gur’ give rise to soggy mass which does not solidify properly.
✓ Biological control:
Epipyrops melanoleuca an egg parasitoid , Ladybird beetle predator for its eggs and nymphs, White muscardine fungus, Metarrhizium anisopliae
✓ Chemical Control:
•Deltamethrin
•Carbosulfan
•Fenitrothion
•Malathion