Cabbage butterfly (Pieris brassicae)

Symptoms

• The larvae of the pest after hatching from the eggs feed gregariously on the foliage and burrow into the heads and skeletonize leaves.
• In case of severe cases the heads become completely unfit for marketing.

Management

• The caterpillars should be hand-picked and destroyed.
• Spray 20 gram bird pepper (kandari) extract in 1 litre cow's urine and 10 litre of water.
• Spray tobacco decoction.
• Spray Beauveria bassiana (20 g/litre of water).
• Conserve parasitoids like Cotesia glomeratus.
• Spray neem seed kernel @ 4.0 % and Bt @ 500g/ha are also effective.