author(s)
MS Lusana, AJP Tarimo and LS Mulungu

abstract
Insect abundance and composition in the Western Cotton Growing area (WCGA) were investigated from November 2018 to April 2019.The aim was to investigate the cotton insect pest abundance in relation to crop phenological stages. The experiment was laid out as factorial in Randomized Completely Block Design with three replications in three locations. Data on abundance of insect was collected by counting insects on 36 randomly selected plants per location. The collected data were subjected to two-way Analysis of Variance and mean separated using Least Significant Difference (LSD_0.05) procedure. Results show that there were significant variations among locations and phenological phases. The location, Shanwa had higher number of aphids than other insect species during phase one while in later growing stages; Binza had highest number of insect. It is concluded that in all phenological phases of cotton, aphids and ants were the most dominant insect.