AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH COMMUNICATION CENTRE www.arccjournals.com/www.legumeresearch.in LR-3895 [1-8] *Corresponding author’s e-mail: pkojha2@gmail.com 1 Dept. of Entomology, Bihar Agricultural University, Sabour, Bhagalpur-813 210, Bihar, India 2 District Sericulture Development Office, Kanpur-208 002, Uttar Pradesh, India Legume Research, Print ISSN:0250-5371 / Online ISSN:0976-0571 Incremental cost-benefit ratio of certain bio-pesticides against Helicoverpa armigera Hubner (Noctuidae: Lepidoptera) in chickpea P.K. Ojha*, R. Kumari, R.S. Chaudhary 1 and N.K. Pandey 2 University Department of Zoology, Lalit Narayan Mithila University, Darbhanga-846 004, Bihar, India Received: 19-05-2017 Accepted: 12-06-2017 DOI: 10.18805/LR-3895 ABSTRACT To determine Incremental Cost-Benefit Ratio (ICBR) of certain bio-pesticides and insecticide against 2 nd larval instar of Helicoverpa armigera in chickpea, an experiment was conducted during winter 2011. Certain pesticides as sole treatments were tested with standard, low and high doses and in treatment combinations with one half of standard doses of two respective pesticides only once at 50% flowering and podding stage of the crop. Upon crop maturity; total grain yield, additional yield, increased income and net income were obtained for each respective treatment to determine its ICBR. Overall, the treatment combination of ½ Btk + ½ Azadirachtin had the highest ICBR of 1:27.57. The lowest ICBR of 1:5.25 was obtained with Azadirachtin-0.05 %, when other treatments had ICBR from 1:8.51 to 1:23.28. Key words: Bio-pesticides, Chickpea, Helicoverpa armigera, Incremental Cost-Benefit Ratio. INTRODUCTION Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) is a most important pulse crop of India. India is the largest chickpea producer as well as consumer in the world. Its seeds are eaten as green vegetable, fried, roasted, as snack food and grinded to obtain flour and dal. It also plays an important role in maintaining soil fertility, particularly in dry, rainfed areas. Chickpea is a rich source of nutritional values in the diet of Indian people because of containing 21.5 per cent protein, 64.5 per cent carbohydrates and 4.5 per cent fat (Ahlawat and Omprakash, 1996). Chickpea occupies 7.1 million ha with a production of 5.75 million tonnes, accounting for 30.9 per cent and 39.9 per cent of total pulse area and production in India, respectively (Shivaleela et al. 2014). The crop is known to suffer from a number of insect- pests among which the Helicoverpa armigera is the key pest of chickpea (Manjunath et al. 1989). H. armigera appeared in large number during vegetative and pod formation stages of chickpea (Golvankar et al. 2015). It is a most serious pest of important agricultural crops like tomato, cotton, chickpea, pigeon pea, cereals, oil seeds and vegetable crops, etc. (Jat and Ameta, 2013). A single larvae can destroy several pods before reaching to maturity and this pest was reported to damage 5-40 per cent pods of chickpea (Shinde et al. 2013; Kale and Men, 2008; Chauhan and Dahiya, 1994). Since last few years, the average production of chickpea has experienced very low in our country due to attack of H. armigera (Lal, 1996). H. armigera is a charismatic insect- pest in agriculture accounting for the consumption of over 55 per cent of total insecticides used in India (Singh and Kumar, 2012; Puri, 1995). The yield losses of chickpea due to H. armigera were 75-90 per cent and in some places the losses were up to 100 per cent (Jeyarani et al. 2010; Lal 1996). To control this insect-pest, pesticides are being used in large quantities. However, the enormous use of same groups of pesticides causes problem of pesticide residues in foodstuff and environmental contamination (Ghugal et al. 2013). This has promoted the necessity for seeking new, safer, biodegradable insecticides that could be feasible and effective for insect pest management (Prasad and Purohit, 2013). Few researchers (Ahmed et al. 2004; Ghosh et al. 2010; Meena and Raju, 2014 and Dhaka et al. 2015) have stated that the different group of insecticide showed the great impact on incidence of this pest with single or low dose of insecticides. Therefore, in order to design a superior pest management model for the crop in this region, the present research study was undertaken to know the impact of certain bio-pesticides such as Bacillus thuringiensis kurstaki (Btk), Beauveria bassiana (Bb), Helicoverpa armigera nuclear polyhedrosis virus ( HaNPV), the botanical pesticide (Azadirachtin) and a synthetic insecticidal formulation (Quinalphos) against 2 nd instar larvae of H. armigera to examine its impact on yield increase in chickpea. Thereafter, Incremental Cost-Benefit Ratio (ICBR) of various sole and treatment combinations were obtained to find out the best economical application.