author(s)
Jasra Bano, Muneer Ahmad Sofi, Barkat Hussain, S Hakeem, Sushil Kumar and Ajaz

abstract
The turnip (Brassica rapa) Family: Brassicaceae (mustard family), is widely used in Kashmir as vegetable. In Kashmir, it is a popular vegetable both among rich and poor and grown in almost all kitchen gardens and also as a commercial crop around cities and towns. Farmers always need quality seed for sowing, hence it was felt to study the insect pollinators of turnip which are responsible for proper pollination of the crop. The experiment was carried out at Urban Technological Park, Habbak, Division of Vegetable Science, SKUAST-K and the study was made on crop raised during Rabi season of 2017-2018. It was found 14 species of insects pollinators/visitors were recorded from turnip bloom, The 5 species belonged to Hymenoptera, 7 to Diptera, 2 to Lepidoptera. Hymenoptera was the most abundant order constituting 87.57% of total pollinators. Among the total pollinators, Lassioglossum marginatum was the most predominant constituting 35.46% of the total pollinators followed by A. cerana constituting 26.03%, A. mellifera which constitutes 16.45% and other pollinators contributing only 22.06%. The abundance of insect pollinators was the maximum at 10:00 to 11:00 hr, followed by 12:00 to 13:00 hr and was least at 14:00 to 15:00 hr recording 115.5, 73.3 and 1.6 total population of pollinators at the respective timings.