• The virus is effective against the pest on several crops.
• The virus is generally propagated in early fifth instar by surface contamination of semi-synthetic diet.

Production procedure

• The mass production of the NPV is carried out in early fifth instar stage of S. litura , which yields maximum amount of the NPV. Therefore, in the host culture laboratory a continuous culture of the insects is maintained with proper handling procedures.
• The larvae are grown in diet held in 5 ml glass vials. When the larvae reach the appropriate stage they are transferred to the virus production facility.
• The NPV is multiplied by feeding the semi synthetic diet coated with a clean inoculum of the NPV that has previously been standardized.
• This is accomplished by placing aliquots of 10 ml of the viral suspension of concentration 1 x 108 Polyhedral Occlusion Bodies (POB) in the centre over the diet surface either in glass vials and spreading the suspension uniformly all over the surface with a polished glass rod.
• Larvae are released singly after 15 min. into each glass vial/cell and incubated at 25oC for 10 days.
• The larvae begin to die from 5th day onward. The cadavers are collected individually and transferred to 500 ml plastic containers and frozen immediately until processing.
• The processing method is similar to that of H. armigera .