CHAPTER 5

MAJOR PEST OF
PADDY
AGR464
 Content
• Brown Planthopper -BPH
o Green Leafhopper -GLH
• White Backed Planthopper -WBPH
BPH: Taxonomic tree
• Phylum: Arthropoda
• Subphylum: Uniramia
• Class: Insecta
• Order: Hemiptera
• Suborder: Auchenorrhyncha
• Unknown: Fulgoroidea
• Family: Delphacidae
• Genus: Nilaparvata
• Species: lugens
 GLH: Taxonomic tree
• Phylum: Arthropoda
• Subphylum: Uniramia
• Class: Insecta
• Order: Hemiptera
• Suborder: Auchenorrhyncha
• Unknown: Cicadelloidea
• Family: Cicadellidae
• Genus: Nephotettix
• Species: virescens
 BPH-Damage & Symptoms
• In general, planthoppers generally remain confined to plant stems
and leaf sheaths while leafhoppers occur on plant foliage.

• Due to this habit, planthoppers are overlooked by farmers until

appearance of ‘hopperburn’ symptoms in which crop starts
drying and lodging.

• However, during outbreaks, planthoppers can be witnessed in

abundance on leaves also.

• Planthoppers on rice stems, feed on leaves and damage the crop.

• However, they are more important as vectors of virus disease

“tungro”Rice plants affected by tungro
 Leafhopper –Identification
• As the name indicates, BPH nymphs and adults are brown in
colour

• WBPH nymphs are white or grey and adults have a white stripe
at their back.

• The GLH adults are green with black spot and black patch on
wings.

• The BPH and WBPH occur in long-winged (macropterous) and

short-winged (brachypterous) forms.

• These are small insects measuring mm.

• The BPH is also known to undertake long range migration.

BPH-Damage
• Both nymphs and adults of planthoppers damage crop by sucking
sap from plant stems and leaf sheaths. and as a result leaves start
turning yellow.

• If not checked during initial stages, population builds up rapidly

resulting in “hopperburn”.

• In case of BPH typical concentric circles of hopperburn can be

witnessed in field.

• Besides direct damage, BPH also transmits grassy stunt virus

disease in rice.

• Crop damage (hopper burn) due to planthopper

 Damage
• Leaf hoppers also suck sap from leaves but these are more important as transmitters
of tungro virus disease than as direct feeders.

• Dense rice crop under continuously flooded conditions and excess use of
nitrogenous fertilizers provides very congenial environment for planthopper
population build up.

• Irrigation should be applied in ‘alternate wetting & drying fashion’ and if

planthopper population buildup is perceived then irrigation should be withheld for
few days.

• Likewise, excess use of nitrogenous fertilizers be avoided with emphasis on

balanced fertilizer use.
 Management Practices
Mechanical & physical measures
• Flood the seedbed, for a day, so that only the tips of seedlings are exposed will control BPH.
• Sweep small seedbeds with a net to remove some BPH (but not eggs), particularly from dry seed
beds. At high BPH densities, sweeping will not remove sufficient numbers of BPH from the base of
the plant.

Biological control
• If natural enemies out-number BPH the risk of hopperburn is low. Even rice already damaged by
hopperburn should not be treated with insecticides if natural enemies out-number BPH. Natural
enemies of BPH include water striders, mirid bugs, spiders, and various egg parasitoids.

Chemical control
• Only apply insecticides to the seedbed, for BPH or WBPH, if all of these conditions are met:
• an average of more than one planthopper per stem,
• on average, more planthoppers than natural enemies,
• flooding the seedbed is not an option.
 Management Practices
• Proper monitoring and judicious use of fertilizers & irrigation hold key to
planthopper management in rice.

• Monitoring can be done by inspecting plant stems at several places in all parts of
field.

• As plant stems are tapped, these insects fall on water and can be seen swimming.

• Likewise, light traps can also be used for monitoring with Light trap
Management Practices
• Spiders play very important role in containing
planthoppers and therefore they should be conserved
through selective pesticide application.

• This can be ensured through use of granular formulation

of pesticides or leaving certain areas in the field
untreated.

• There is also practice of placing rice straw bundles in

field after transplanting to encourage spider population
build up.

• Economic threshold level (ETL): 8-10 hoppers/hill

 Summary
• Brown planthopper (BPH), whitebacked planthopper (WBPH) and green leafhopper (GLH),
Nephotettix virescens are most damaging pests of rice

• Both nymphs and adults of planthoppers damage crop by sucking sap from plant stems and
leaf sheaths.

• On other hand, leafhoppers feed on leaves and damage the crop.

• However, they are more important as vectors of virus disease “tungro”.

• Dense rice crop under continuously flooded conditions and excess use of nitrogenous
fertilizers provides very congenial environment for planthopper population build up.

• Spiders play very important role in containing planthoppers and therefore they should be
conserved through selective pesticide application.
 White Backed Planthopper:
Taxonomic tree
• Phylum: Arthropoda
• Class: Insecta
• Order: Hemiptera
• Genus: Sogatella
• Species: furcifera
 WBPH -Symptoms
• On Rice Seedlings
Severely attacked seedlings do not grow. They are stunted, wilt, and eventually die (Dale, 1994).
On Older Rice Plants
The nymphs and adults suck cell sap at the base of the rice plant and the leaf surface.
• The attacked plants turn yellow and later acquire a rust-red appearance, spreading from the leaf tips to the rest of the plants
(Atwal et al., 1967; Dale, 1994).
• S. furcifera can become sufficiently numerous to kill the plants by hopperburn: the tillers dry up and turn brown as a result
of excessive removal of plant sap (Dhaliwal et al., 1983; Khan and Saxena, 1985; Reissig et al., 1986).
• Gravid females cause additional damage by making oviposition punctures in leaf sheaths. The honeydew produced by the
hoppers serves as a medium for mould growth (Dale, 1994), which imparts a smoky hue to the paddy field (Atwal et al.,
1967).
On Rice Grains
The number of grains and the panicle length decrease when rice is infested at the panicle initiation stage (Dale, 1994).
During the heading stage, damaged glumes become brown and some remain unfilled (Noda, 1986). Grains do not fill fully
and ripening is delayed when plants are attacked at the maturation period (Dale, 1994).
 Prevention and control
IPM Programmes

Integration of varietal resistance and biological control provides effective control of populations of S. furcifera under
field conditions (Salim and Heinrichs, 1986). An IPM programme was successfully implemented in China, using 63
selected resistant cultivars, lower plant densities, and selected insecticides (Hu and Chen, 1986).

Cultural Control

Growing no more than two crops per year and using early maturing varieties may help control this planthopper
(Reissig et al., 1986). S. furcifera is unable to complete a third generation on early-maturing varieties. Judicious use of
fertilizer by splitting nitrogen applications can also reduce planthopper outbreaks (Litsinger, 1994).

Synchronous planting, including planting neighbouring fields within 3 weeks of each other and maintaining a rice-free
period may be effective (Reissig et al., 1986), but this approach is controversial (Way and Heong, 1994).

The field should be drained for 3 or 4 days when heavy infestations occur (Reissig et al., 1986). In China, draining of
fields at the 8- to 9-leaf stage of the first crop and at the 12- to 13-leaf stage of the second crop improved rice growth and
increased populations of natural enemies while inhibiting population growth of S. furcifera (Zhang, 1991).
 Biological Control
S. furcifera population is generally maintained at low levels by naturally occurring biological control agents (Reissig et al., 1986).

Most egg parasitoids can parasitize alternate delphacid hosts present in non-rice habitats, which plays an important role in their
conservation. These parasitoids require one or two generations for host adaptation (Yu et al., 1998).

Migration of S. furcifera along with some of its natural enemies, viz. the hemipteran predator Cyrtorhinus lividipennis and the fungal
pathogen Erynia delphacis, appears to play a significant role in the redistribution of the pest and its natural enemies (Reynolds et al.,
1999; Matsui et al., 1998).
In northern Japan egg mortality varies between 30 and 70% due to predation, parasitism and inactivity after hatching (Iitomi, 1999). In
Peninsular Malaysia in 1989, mortality in the egg stage of S. furcifera varied from 11 to 90% in direct-seeded ricefields. Anagrus
flaveolus, A. perforator and A. frequens were the major mortality factors which accounted for a maximum of 69% egg mortality
(Watanabe et al., 1992).
In Thailand, A. optabilis parasitized 14 to 100% egg masses of S. furcifera in the field. Other common natural enemies attacking the pest
were stylopids, ants, pipunculids and dryinids (Hirashima et al., 1979).
The egg predation potential of female C. lividipennis was estimated at 6.36 per day and that of the first-instar nymph at 1.47 per day
(Geetha and Gopalan, 1999). The predation rates of adult males and females, and fifth-instar nymphs on first-instar S. furcifera were 3.71,
4.84 and 3.46 per day, respectively. Of five predatory spiders (Lycosa pseudoannulata, Tetragnatha javana, Eucta javana, Thomisus
cherapunjeus and Oxyopes javanus), L. pseudoannulata prefers S. furcifera to green leafhoppers (Kumar and Velusamy, 1997).
Host-Plant Resistance
Diverse sources of resistance to S. furcifera, both in cultivated and wild species of rice, have been identified by several
workers. At IRRI (Philippines), evaluation for resistance began in 1970. About 50,000 Oryza sativa accessions have been
screened, and numerous resistance sources have been identified (Heinrichs et al., 1985; Romena et al., 1986). About half
of the 437 wild rice accessions evaluated were also resistant to S. furcifera. These resistant wild rice accessions were
primarily O. minuta, O. nivara and O. officinalis. In India, O. officinalis, O. punctata, and O. latifolia showed high levels
of resistance to the pest (Velusamy et al., 1994).
Five genes for resistance to S. furcifera have been identified. These are Wbph 1 from cultivar N22; Wbph 2 from ARC
10239; Wbph 3 from ADR52; wbph 4 from Podiwi A8; and Wbph 5 from N'diang Marie (Sidhu et al., 1979; Angeles et
al., 1981; Hernandez and Khush, 1981; Nair et al., 1982; Saini et al., 1982; Wu and Khush, 1983).

S. furcifera resistance factors are attributed to low chlorophyll, low sugar, low amino acid and high phenol content in the
plant (Rath and Mishra, 1998). Mechanisms of resistance to S. furcifera include antixenosis for oviposition and antibiotic
effects on feeding, survival, and development (Xiao et al., 1989). Insects that fed on resistant varieties had lower
fecundity, smaller body size, significantly lower nymphal survival with longer nymphal duration, slower population
increase, and produced less honeydew, indicating antibiosis (Zhou, 1987; Liu et al., 1989; Gunathilagaraj and Chelliah,
1991; Lal et al., 1992; Nalini and Gunathilagaraj, 1992).

Chemical Control
Due to the variable regulations around (de-)registration of pesticides, we are for the moment not including any specific
chemical control recommendations