Abstract
Nine brinjal varieties, i.e., Bemisal, Black Beauty, Black Pearl, Dilnasheen, Hybrid Shilpa, Hybrid 888, Hybrid 3715, Nirala and Round Black, were screened for resistance to brinjal shoot and fruit borer (BSFB) in a field study at Sahiwal, Pakistan on spring and fall sown crops in 2011 and 2012. The experiments were conducted in a Randomized Complete Block Design having nine treatments and four replications. The fall crop was transplanted in the field on March 11 in 2011 and 2012 and the spring crop on August 15 in 2011 and 2012. Each plot had four rows, spaced 50 cm apart. Plant to plant spacing was 30 cm. Data on shoot infestation were recorded from April 5 to May 5 and September 10 to October 11 for spring and fall sown crops, respectively in both years. Healthy and infested shoots were counted on 10 randomly selected plants from the middle two rows of each plot. For fruit infestation data all the marketable fruit was plucked from plants in the middle two rows of each plot. Data were recorded from May 5 to September 15 and from September 30 to December 30 for the spring and fall sown crops, respectively in both years. Data were recorded at 15 day intervals for both shoot and fruit infestation. Fruit firmness of twenty fruit from randomly selected plants from the middle two rows of each plot was recorded using a penetrometer. The results of this two years' study showed that shoot infestation was lowest on the varieties Hybrid Shilpa (5.6%), Nirala (6.0%) and Hybrid 3715 (6.4%) and fruit infestation was lowest on Hybrid Shilpa (22.6%) and Nirala (24.0%). BSFB incidence was higher on the spring sown crop as compared that on the fall sown crop in both years. However, the incidence was not significantly different between the two years. The highest fruit firmness was recorded for Nirala (11.8 Kg). There was a significant positive relationship between fruit firmness and percent BSFB infestation.