author(s)
Neelesh Raypuriya, SB Das, AK Bhowmick and Vibha

abstract
During the 2016-17, for the mass multiplication of Metarhizium anisopliae (Metchnikoff) Sorokin, in the laboratory of the Department of Entomology (JNKVV, Jabalpur), many natural and liquid substrates (i.e. rice, maize, sorghum, green-gram, chickpea, wheat, potato dextrose broth, sabouraud’s dextrose broth and rice starch) were used for mass multiplication of M. anisopliae, which found that the highest spore load of M. anisopliae (9.78 x 10¹⁰ cfu ml^-1) was harvested from rice followed by SDB (8.11 x 10¹⁰ cfu ml^-1) and chickpea (8.00 x 10¹⁰ cfu ml^-1) respectively. Whereas, the minimum number of spores (2.78 x 10¹⁰ cfu ml^-1) was obtained from wheat. Significantly lowest production cost was obtained in rice (Rs. 0.26 for 1 x 10¹⁰ spores’ ml^-1). Therefore, rice was found to be the most appropriate and economical substrate for the mass multiplication of M. anisopliae followed SDB and Chickpea.