author(s)
J Aravind, K Samiayyan and S Kuttalam

abstract
Supervised field experiments were conducted during December 2012 to March 2013 and July to October 2013 at Kallar (Location I), Idukki district, Kerala with the cardamom cultivars, Njellani (Green gold). Diafenthiuron is very effective against the pests of cardamom and it is not found to have greater impact on pollinator and natural enemy diversity in cardamom ecosystem in terms of species richness, diversity and evenness. This was evident from the overlapping diversity, richness and evenness indices calculated for sprayed and unsprayed areas. Diafenthiuron was found to have no impact on species evenness or distribution since all the five indices were found to be high for sprayed area. It was also found that in some observations where the number of species found in the sprayed clumps was lower than the unsprayed clumps. For instance, 21 days after sixth spray recorded an evenness index (E4) of 0.74 in sprayed and 0.85 in unsprayed clumps.