author(s)
Muhammad Irshad, Muhammad Mazhar Saleem, Qurat ul Ain Hanif, Muhammad Nasir, Muhammad Usman Asif and Rao Muhammad Shamraiz

abstract
Dusky cotton bug (Oxycarenus spp.) has become a major insect pest for cotton crop in Pakistan. They are crushed during ginning process that stain valuable cotton lint and stained lint fetch low price in the market. The present study was designed to evaluate the efficacy of different insecticides against the dusky cotton bug (DCB) under field conditions. Seven insecticides viz. bifenthrin, fipronil, triazophos, chlorpyriphos, lambda cyhalothrin, deltamethrin + triazophos and clothianidin were sprayed in order to determine the reduction in the pest population. The experiment was conducted under Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) with three replications. The results revealed that most effective insecticide against dusky cotton bug was chlorpyriphos with a reduction of 96.98% in the pest population followed by triazophos (91.03%) and lambda cyhalothrin (89.27%). However among all the tested insecticides fipronil was least effective with 64.15% reduction of DCB population up to seven days. Our data will help the farmers in future to control the pest population under study.