2. Red palm weevil: Rhynchophorus ferrugineus (Curculionidae: Coleoptera)

Distribution and status: Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Assam and Maharashtras. Enjoys major pest status.

Damage Symptoms:

Holes on the trunk with brownish ooze; yellowing of inner leaves and gradual wilting of central shoot in the crown. Upto 50 Nos. of grubs can be found feeding on the soft tissues inside the trunk. Click to View Symptom Video

Bionomics
Egg: Female lays upto 276 oval, white eggs in scooped out small cavities on palms of upto seven years, and on older trees it deposits in the hands and other cut injuries of trunk. Egg period 2 to 5 days. Grub: Apodous light yellowish grub with a red head becomes full grown in 36-78 days and pupates in a fibrous cocoon inside the trunk itself. Reddish brown adult weevil has six dark spots on thorax. Male has conspicuous long snout with tuft of hairs.

Click to View Life Cycle Video
	1. Egg, 2. Grub and 3. Cocoon

		Management 1. Remove and disposal of damaged and wilted trees. 2. Avoid injuries on trunk and any injury should be plastered with clay or cemented with copper oxychloride. 3. Avoid cutting green fronds. 4. Root feeding with monocrotophos @ 10 ml + 10 ml water should be done after harvest of nuts. Observe a waiting period of 45 days.
Pupa	Adult

5. Set up attractant traps using mud pots with molasses / toddy 2.5 lit + acetic acid 5 ml + yeast 5 g + split tender coconut stems / petioles @ 30/ac.
6. Insert 1-2 aluminium phosphide tablets inside the tunnel and plug all the holes with clay + copper oxychloride
7. Use aggregation pheromone traps @ 1/ha or use ferrolure in combination with food baits consisting of 1kg sugarcane molasses + 5g of yeast + 5ml glacial acetic acid + split petioles of coconut taken in a bucket of 10 L capacity
   
   

Click to View Chemical Control Video