Prasad R C Doddala

• PhD
• Researcher at Ministry for Primary Industries

Many insects including mosquitoes, butterflies, honeybees, flesh flies and ants have been shown to prefer diets that contain both sugars and amino acids. Fitness gains as enhanced longevity, flight capacity and fecundity, suggest an ultimate evolutionary mechanism for the preference of amino acid-rich sugar diets. However, the proximate mechanism(s...

Host plant cues are known to shape insect-host plant association in many insect groups. More pronounced associations are generally manifested in specialist herbivores, but little is known in generalist herbivores. We used a polyphagous native beetle from New Zealand, bronze beetle, Eucolaspis sp. “Hawkes Bay” (Chrysomelidae: Eumolpinae) to explore...

Eucolaspis sp. "Hawke's Bay" (Chrysomelidae: Eumolpinae) is a pest that inflicts huge economic loss in many organic apple (Malus domestica Borkh.) orchards in New Zealand. The timing of control methods for this pest has been shown to be crucial for success. To aid in planning control programs, we studied threshold temperature and degree-days requir...

Eucolaspis Sharp 1886 is a New Zealand native leaf beetle genus (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae: Eumolpinae) with poorly described species and a complex taxonomy. Many economically important fruit crops are severely damaged by these beetles. Uncertain species taxonomy of Eucolaspis is leaving any biological research, as well as pest management, tenuous....

Zeugodacus cucumis and Bactrocera jarvisi are pests of fruit and vegetable crops and cause damage to horticulture industries. Immature stages of these two fruit fly species have been intercepted in New Zealand a number of times. Identification to species was not possible using morphological characters; thus, it is important to develop an assay for...

The Ministry for Primary Industries’ PHELs receive many notifications each year of pests suspected of being new to New Zealand. Most notifications are received through the Ministry’s free Pest and Disease Hotline and are an important source of surveillance data. During the period January 2015–February 2018, PHELs received ~9400 notifications, with...

Eucolaspis spp beetles are native and endemic to New Zealand and are important pests of exotic fruit crops Organic apple orchards in Hawkes Bay seem to be particularly vulnerable and there adult beetles emerge during spring/summer feed on leaves and fruitlets and cause significant economic loss Seasonal variations in bronze beetle occurrence especi...

The population structure and dynamics of bronze beetle, Eucolaspis spp., and other soil macro-invertebrates were studied in eight organic apple orchards in Hawke's Bay during spring/summer 2007-08. Orchards with high bronze beetle population densities also had higher abundance of all types of soil macro-invertebrates than orchards with low bronze b...

A field experiment conducted at Regional Agricultural Research Station, Lam, Guntur during 1998-99 crop season for evaluating different insecticides against serpentine leaf miner, Liriomyza trifolii (Burgess) on tomato revealed that plant products NSKE 5 per cent and Neemazal 0.5% were effective against the leaf miner among the insecticides tested...