Abstract:
Tea (Camellia sinensis Kuntze) is a very important cash crop in Kenya.
Several insect pests, however, have been recorded on tea affecting
production and prominent among which is the tea mosquito, Helopeltis
schoutedeni Reuter. The tea mosquito bug is assumed to damage the pluck
able shoots and can cause up to 60% crop loss by denying the farmer any
plucking shoots. This study was conducted to determine the effect of
varying population on puncture numbers and the most preferred part of the
tea shoot by the tea mosquito bug (Helopeltis schuotedeni Reuter) in a
greenhouse at Tea Research Foundation of Kenya. Five population levels
of pests were used as treatments and replicated three times in a completely
random design. Data on the punctures were collected on different parts of
the leaves. The result showed that punctures made by the insects
increased significantly (p=0.01) with the increase in the insect population.
Punctures made by one to three tea mosquito bugs were significantly less
than punctures made by four and five pests on shoots. There was also a
significantly (p<0.01) lower number of punctures on internodes made by
three pests than those made by five pests but there was no significant
difference of punctures on different internodes. There were significant
(p<0.01) effect to puncture distribution on the shoot. Feeding preference
was concentrated on first and second leaves of the shoot than the other
parts. This study showed that the bug prefers the pluckable parts of the
bush and that the threshold population that would cause significant
damage to tea shoot are three bugs and above.