© J. ent. Res., 41 (2) : 187-192 (2017) INTRODUCTION Vegetables are the important constituents of Indian agriculture and nutritional security due to their short duration, high yield, nutritional richness, economic viability and ability to generate on-farm and off-farm employment. In India, vegetable production contributes 60.3 per cent of total horticultural production emphasizing importance of vegetables among all horticultural crops. India is the second largest producer of vegetables in the world after China, The existing area under vegetable cultivation in India is around 9.39 million ha with a production of 1628 million MT and the productivity of 17.35 MT per ha. Karnataka is the tenth largest producer of vegetables in the country. In Karnataka, vegetables are cultivated in an area of 0.42 million ha with production of 75 million MT and productivity of about 17.9 MT per ha (Anon., 2014). The major vegetables grown in Karnataka are chilli, tomato, brinjal, potato, onion, okra, cabbage, cucurbits, radish, carrot and leafy vegetables. The productivity in vegetables is low due to many biotic factors like insect pests, diseases and abiotic stresses. Among various constraints for low productivity in vegetables, the infestation and loss caused by insect pests is one of the main contributory factors. Among the insect pests, caterpillars belonging to family Noctuidae of order Lepidoptera are of great economic importance. Larvae of these noctuid moths are polyphagous and feed on different kind of vegetables, grasses, cereals, weeds, lowers and fruit crops. Many of these caterpillars cause serious damage to foliage, growing shoots and stem and to economic parts like lower buds, lower, fruit or seed. Enormous efforts and money is spent for the management of these pests often go as waste because of inaccurate diagnosis or identiication of pest due to their hiding nature or nocturnal activity. The noctuid caterpillars are eruciform and are called by different names like cutworms, borers, defoliators or semiloopers based on their feeding habits. Moths are commonly called as owlet moths or under wing moths because of the owl like appearance of head and are medium sized, robustly built hairy moths. Most have drab forewings, although some have brightly coloured hind wings. Perusal of literature reveals that suficient literature is available on the Lepidopterous insects associated with vegetables in India by Lefroy, 1909; Fletcher, 1914, 1921; Pradhan, 1969; Nair, 1970; Butani and Jotwani, 1984; Gupta, 1990; David, 2001; Kumar et al., 2007, Sharma et al., 2008 and Sharma and Ramamurthy, 2009 provided Diversity of noctuid moths associated with major vegetable crops in Karnataka Muddasar, Venkateshalu * , Y.K. Kotikal, P.R. Shashank, Suvarna Patil and T.B. Allolli Department of Entomology, College of Horticulture, Bagalkot, University of Horticultural Sciences, Bagalkot – 587 104, Karnataka, India ABSTRACT The extensive studies were conducted on noctuids moths associated with major vegetables in different districts of Karnataka i.e. Bangalore Mysore, Chikmaglore, Bagalkot, Belgaum and Dharwad. All the collected specimens were identiied and sorted into 42 species belonging to three families of Noctuoidea. Highest numbers of species were recorded in family Noctuidae (29 species) belonged to eight subfamilies. Family Nolidae and Erebidae accounted for six and seven species respectively and were placed in two and four subfamilies, respectively. Key words : Noctuidae, vegetables, checklist, diversity. *Corresponding author's E-mail: venk0910@gmail.com DOI : 10.5958/0974-4576.2017.00030.5