Symptom of damage:

• Large number of insects remains in leaf sheath and suck the sap.
• Plants become week, yellowish and very much stunted in circular patches.
• Presence of white waxy fluff in leaf sheaths. The infestation is referred to as ‘Soorai’ disease.

Identification of insect pest:

• Egg: The female lays numerous yellowish white eggs/ simply deposits nymphs in outer leaf sheaths.
• Nymph: The newly hatched nymphs remain are crowded within the waxy filaments for 6-10 h before they disperse to various parts of the same plant. The pale yellowish nymph is active and crawls about the plant for a while and settles itself on the stem and turns dark yellow after a day. Body gets covered with waxy material on second day.
• Adult: Nymphs and adults being wingless look alike. Females are reddish, oval, soft-bodied and living in colonies inside the leaf sheath. Males are small, slender, pale-yellow, having single pair of wings and a style like process at the end of the abdomen but lack mouthparts. Males are seldom found in the colonies, so reproduction is mainly through parthenogenesis .

Management:

• Remove the grasses and trim the bunds during the main field preparation before transplanting
• Augment bio-control agents like coccinellids, spiders in the rice field.
• Remove and destroy the affected plants
• Spray any one of the following

• Buprofezin (25 SC) @ 200 ml/ ac
• Thiamethoxam 20 WDG @ 100 g/ ac
• Dimethoate (30 EC) 400 ml/ ac along with