Population Density of Certain Piercing-Sucking Insects Infesting Sunflower Crop in Erbil City.

A field trial was performed in Grdarasha Research Station College of Agricultural Engineering Sciences/ Erbil/ Kurdistan region/Iraq, to investigate the piercing and sucking insect pests of sunflower crop and study nature of damages, population density and seasonal incidence of two major sucking insect pests during the flower initiation of sunflower crop. The CRD design was used for the experiment implementation. The results of this study revealed that two major piercing and sucking insects were recorded infesting different parts of sunflower plants, insect pest were sunflower whitefly (Bemisia tabaci) and sunflower lace bug (Galeatus scrophicus), belonging to the insect families of Aleyrodidae and Tingidae, and both belong to the order Homoptera and Hemiptera respectively. According the results, lace bug insects were more abundant that the sunflower whitefly during the growing season, the highest population density of whitefly was at fourth sampling week (6.50 individuals/ plant) while its infestation percentage was low and averaged 20% infestation/ field plants, however, the highest population density of lace bug was at the fifth week of sampling which was 22.60 individuals/ plant, while the lace bug infestation percentage was 90% infestation/ field plants.