Major Insect Pests of Bitter Gourd (M. Charantia L.) and Their Control

Bitter gourd(Momordica charantia L)is an important vegetable. it has great nutrition value. Bitter gourds have been shown to have significant antioxidant activity, which may be an important property of plant medicines associated with the treatment of several ill fated diseases including diabetes.This crop is attacked by many insect pests in Peshawar Valley but among these two pests are very important Red Pumpkin Beetle and Fruit fly. Red pumpkin Beetle attack the crop after emergence and can causes serious losses in seedling stage. The fruit fly, Bactrocera cucurbitae attack the crop in fruiting stage. The losses varies from 30-80 percent.This study was carried out to check different bitter gourd varieties and different chemical and botanicals against these two major pests. Promising results were obtained from the study. Some botanicals also showed good results against these pests.

Hussain Ali, Currently Ph.D Scholar at College of Food and Agricultural Sciences, King Saud University, Riyadh born in Swabi, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa,1985. He did his B.Sc (Hons) and M.Sc (Hons) in Entomology from KPK Agricultural University Peshawar, Pakistan. He has won many national and international awards and have published ten Research papers.