An experiment was carried out during 2009-2010 on one hundred tamarind genotypes of the Nallur tamarind grove, a few kilometres away from Bengaluru International Airport, to investigate the genetic variability, character association and their direct and indirect effects on the fruit weight of tamarind. The genotypic coefficient of variation was high for seed weight, fibre weight, seed number, beak length and fruit weight. In all cases, phenotypic variances were higher than the genotypic variance. Moderate to high heritability as well as genetic advances were estimated for pod length, pod width, seed weight, seed number, number of ridges, number of furrows, pulp weight and fruit weight indicated that these traits was under additive gene control and selection for genetic improvement for these traits would be effective. Correlation studies revealed the highest significant association of fruit weight with seed weight followed by pulp weight, epicarp weight and seed number at genotypic and phenotypic level. Positive direct effects were produced by pulp weight and seed weight, while number of ridges had negative direct effects. The information obtained from the current studies can be used as selection criteria for genetic improvement of tamarind genotypes under study. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/sja.v12i1.21109 SAARC J. Agri., 12(1): 20-25 (2014)

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The results showed that neem leaf powder was the most effective treatment with a record of the highest mean adult mortality of 67.22 per cent and also exhibited the lowest weight loss of 0.67 per cent after 60 days of treatment. It was followed by powders of Eucalyptus (58.89% & 0.87%) and Tulsi (51.11% & 0.80%). The least effectiveness of turmeric rhizome powder against the pest recording minimum adult mortality and maximum weight loss of 30.56% and 1.07% per cent respectively was noticed control against adult mortality (30.56 %), grain weight loss and adult emergence owing to T. castaneum. As a result, 1.5 g/100 g of grains of neem leaf powder can be recommended as a safe control method against T. castaneum in stored wheat. The overall mean adult mortality of T. castaneum in fenvalerate was 72.78 per cent. When it came to treating T. castneum with some inert materials, boric acid treatment was the most effective showed the 100 percent adult mortality, followed by coal ash (71.67 %) and cow dung ash (63.33 %) after 5 days of storage. There was minimum grain weight loss and least adult emergence was recorded in the treatment of coal ash and cow dung ash. Whereas sawdust resulted in the least effective treatment with mean adult mortality of (35.56 %), there was maximum adult emergence seen.