author(s)
N Devasena, RP Soundararajan, SJ Reuolin, P Jeyaprakash and S Robin

abstract
Rice yellow stem borer (YSB), Scirpophaga incertulas (Walker) is one of the important internal insect pest causing serious damage to rice growing areas recently. Limited resistant sources are available for this borer insect to develop resistant varieties. The present investigation focused on the evaluation of a diverse collection of germplasm materials for resistance to YSB damage. Artificial screening methodology was adopted for a set of 44 genotypes by two methods, no choice method to assess the damage and choice method to assess the non preference for oviposition and dead heart (DH) damage. In the choice method, the DH per cent ranged from 28.00 to 92.00 recorded in TKM 6 and TN 1 respectively. In no choice method, the number of egg mass ranged from 1.0 to 4.75/plant. Minimum number of egg mass per plant was recorded on four genotypes viz., TKM 6, RG 146, RG 74 and RG 50. Maximum number of egg mass was recorded on two genotypes viz., IR 36 and Sahbhagi Dhan. The dead heart damage ranged from 50.00 to 95.83 per cent in RG 74 and TN 1 respectively under no choice method. Four genotypes viz., RG 53, RG 74, RG 148 and TPS 5 were moderately resistant in both methods of screening. Among them RG 53 and RG 74 also recorded with least preference for oviposition.