author(s)
Suvendu Kumar Roy, Suprakash Pal, Tulsi Saran Ghimiray and Ayon Roy

abstract
A field experiment was conducted to study the performance of seven flax genotypes for their reaction to the infestation of capsule borer, Helicoverpa armigera (Hubner) as well as various yield attributes at Uttar Banga Krishi Viswavidyalaya, Kalimpong, Darjeeling, West Bengal during the winter seasons of 2004-05 and 2005-06. The capsule borer, Helicoverpa armigera (Hubner) was observed to be the major pest during the period of present investigation. It appeared during the budding and reproductive stage of the crop inflicting considerable damage to the young buds and green capsules. The pooled analysis of variance of flax germplasm over the two years revealed that the genotypes varied significantly for primary and secondary branches/plant, capsules/plant, seeds/capsule, seed yield and biomass yield, irrespective of the year. But the capsule borer infestation did not show any significant variation amongst the genotypes. The incidence of flax capsule borer, H. armigera, failed to show any significant correlation with any yield components in flax. The incidence of H. armigera had a very low direct effect on the biomass yield, thereby indicating absence of any linear relationship between the capsule borer infestation level and the biomass yield. The genotype FT-895 had the highest total rescaled index value of 6.447 and ranked 1 followed by the genotype FT-897 and JRF-1.