author(s)
S Singh and SK Mukherjee

abstract
The study was conducted at the cashew research station, All India Coordinated Research Project (AICRP) on cashew, Orissa University of Agriculture and Technology, Bhubaneswar, during flowering and fruiting period of five most elite varieties of cashew, 2015 which enumerated two species of thrips, i.e. Haplothrips ceylonicus (52%) and Franklieniella schultzei (48%), constantly associated within the cashew blossom. They were found to be feeding on both flowers as well as on the developing nuts leading to shedding of nuts at advanced stages. When the population of thrips was correlated with nut shedding among the cashew varieties, it was found that Jagannath was having the least nut shedding followed by Balabhadra, NRC Sel 2, H-1608 and H 2/16 respectively. An attempt was also made to correlate the population of thrips with the abiotic factors which revealed a non-significant negative correlation with minimum temperature (-0.133), relative humidity (-0.247) and rainfall (-0.316) where as a positive correlation with maximum temperature (0.1300), morning humidity (0.410) and sunshine hours (0.013).