author(s)
Aswin T and Haseena Bhaskar

abstract
Rice leaf mite, Oligonychus oryzae (Hirst) is now emerging as a major pest of rice in Kerala. Pot culture experiment was conducted to evaluate the efficacy of four new acaricide molecules viz., fenazaquin 10 EC, spiromesifen 240 SC, fenpyroximate 5SC and propargite 57S,two botanicals viz., azadirachtin 0.005 per cent and neem oil 2 per centas well as wettable sulphur 80 WP along with a standard check, dicofol 18.5 EC against the mite. All the four novel acaricides significantly reduced mite population on par with that of dicofol. Fenazaquin recorded 96-97 per cent mean reduction in mite population by 14 days of spray treatment followed by spiromesifen (93-96%), propargite (93-96%) and fenpyroximate (93-95%). Efficacy of wettable sulphur (89-95%), was also found to be on par with the novel molecules. However, the efficacy of botanicals was inferior to dicofol.