author(s)
JK Bana, Sushil Kumar, PD Ghoghari, Hemant Sharma and DK Sharma

abstract
An experiment was carried out five consecutive years (2012-16) on mango to study the role of weather parameters on population dynamics of mango hopper, Idioscopus nitidulus (Walker) under south Gujarat climatic conditions. The results revealed two population peaks of hopper during the study period starting with new flush stage followed by another peak during flowering cum fruit set stage of the crop. The correlation of hopper population with diurnal variation (P<0.01) was positively significant while strong significant negative correlation with temperature (minimum, day and night), relative humidity (morning and evening), rainfall and heat sum (P<0.01) was also established. Further, optimized model was developed using diurnal variation which predicted hopper population based on high R value (77%). This forewarning model can be used for decision making in Integrated Pest Management programme, but future validation is needed to improve its predictive efficacy.