Mango hopper (Amritodus atkinsoni Lethierry) causes devastations in the early vegetative stage of the mango crop. The classical management of mango hopper is with systemic insecticides but their overuse has caused environmental pollution. Here, we have evaluated the entomopathogenic role of Clonostachys rosea through bioassay and optimized media for its large-scale culturing. The current study reveals the potentiality of C. rosea as entomopathogenic on A. atkinsoni. Initially, morphological and molecular characterization was used to validate local isolates’ identity as C. rosea. Further, we have evaluated the entomopathogenic role of C. rosea through a bioassay, where the highest mean mortality in A. atkinsoni was observed at a treatment concentration of 3 × 10⁸ conidia/mL, with 96.67% mortality after 168 h of infection. This work also provides insight into the laboratory-based media standardization for C. rosea, resulting in oatmeal agar media and broth as the most suitable artificial media, and 20 °C temperature for its mass culture. Thus, C. rosea is a novo-entomopathogenic fungus on A. atkinsoni and has a high potency to be included in the management of mango hopper pests.

Amongst entomopathogenic fungi (EPF) Beauveria bassiana (Bals.-Criv.) Vuill. is one of the important microbial agents used against insect pests. Biological control using such agents depends on the mass multiplication with suitable media. This study explores a reliable protocol with suitable media to achieve maximum production of biomass, conidial count, and germination. It was observed that broken rice is the best substrate giving maximum biomass, conidia and germination (0.62 g, 10.92x 10⁷ conidia/ ml and 86.94%) followed by sorghum (0.54g, 7.35x 10⁷ conidia/ ml and 77.43%) and maize (0.37g, 6.05x 10⁷ conidia/ ml and 72.44%).

Oil formulation of entomopathogenic fungi Beauveria bassiana for its effect against tobacco caterpillar Spodoptera litura (F.) in six concentrations (1000x10⁵, 700x10⁵, 500x10⁵, 250x10⁵, 125 x10⁵ and 75x10⁵) in the form of sunflower oil formulation and conidial suspension of B. bassiana has been evaluated in this study. All the five concentrations showed mortality and maximum mortality was observed at 108 hr after treatment at maximum concentration (1000x10⁵); and the least mortality of 23.33% was observed at the lowest concentration of 75x10⁵. No significant differences were observed between sunflower oil formulation and conidial suspension.

The present study was conduct to evaluate the efficacy of conidial suspension and sunflower oil formulation of local isolate of Beauveria bassiana (Balsamo) against third instar larvae of G. mellonella. There was not much difference between the efficacies of the formulations, however, some higher response was observed in the sunflower oil formulation. At 72 HAT the mortality response in case of conidial suspension was 73.33% however at the same HAT in case of sunflower oil formulation the mortality response was 83.33% at the concentration of 1000 x 10⁵ spore/ml.