STUDIES ON ENZYME ACTIVITY IN SILKWORM, BOMBYX MORI L. FED WITH THRIPS (PSEUDODENDROTHRIPS MORI) NIWA INFESTED MULBERRY LEAVES

In mulberry, thrips is a dominant pest and causing a lot of damage to the mulberry. The effect of pest infected mulberry leaf feeding with Silkworm and role of enzyme activity in Silk worm have been studied. For the study, good healthy leaf without thrips infestation batch and infested with thrips leaves were fed to cross breed Silkworm (CSR2 Bivoltine hybrid). SDH, LDH and GDH activities were estimated in haemolymph and fat bodies of the silkworm. The SDH and LDH activity gradually increased, this increase however was significant (P-0.05). The GDH activity decreased in both the tissues from day 4 to day 6 when fed with infested mulberry to silkworm. The results indicate that thrips infected mulberry feed has adverse effect on silkworm rearing and Moreover, overall improvement was not noticed in thrips infected leaves fed batch. This can sturdily suggest that thrips infested mulberry leaves cannot be effectively utilized for the silkworm rearing in acute shortage of healthy mulberry leaves.