Best Insecticide for Mangoes:

Are pests like mango weevils, fruit flies, thrips, mealy bugs destroying your mango fruits?

Do these pests make your mango fruits to;

  • Drop before maturity or,
  • Rot before or as they ripen or,
  • Have ugly patches or marks that make them unmarketable?

If that describes your current situation, you have come to the right place.

Here, I will explain all the details about the best insecticide to use on mango trees so that you do not have any problems with pests anymore.

Issues like;

Mango rot caused by pests, ugly patches on mango skin, will be a distant memory.

By reading this information, you will have attractive mango fruits that:

  • Are free of pest damage,
  • Fly off the shelves when taken to the market,
  • Bring you great profits during the mango season

Ready to know more about the best pesticides for mango trees?

If you have answered yes, let us get started.

To know which is the Best insecticide for mango trees, we must first have an understanding of:

  1. Which pests affect mango,
  2. The parts of the mango tree they affect,
  3. Their life cycle,
  4. Their feeding habits.

We will get to the above in greater details, however, here below is a table showing the various mango pests

This information is absolutely necessary if you are to take appropriate measures to control the pests using the appropriate insecticide.

If you are viewing this page on mobile, please turn your phone to landscape position to see the following table clearly

The use of the systemic insecticides thiamethoxam (Actara) and imidacloprid (Confidor) has been previously shown to be an effective method in reducing the numbers of sap-sucking insects in mangoes.

Food Agriculture Organization

Mango Pest

Mode of Attack

Affected plant part

Symptoms of attack

Mango Seed weevil

Female make cuts on fruits and lays eggs

Young fruits, Postharvest stages

Egg laying females make tiny cuts on the fruit surface where they lay the eggs.

Internal rot on the outer surface of the stone/seed.

Stones/seeds develop holes and cotyledons turn black and become a rotten mass

Mango piercing moth

Adult moth pierces ripening fruit at night and sucks out juices.

Ripening fruit.

Fruit does not need to be fully ripe for it to be attacked by Mango piercing moth

A brown circular rotten area develops around the tiny puncture where the adult moth created.

Mango gall midge

Female lays eggs on leaves that hatch in 2-3 days

Leaves

Small galls form on the leaves.

These galls look like pimples o the leaves.

Serious outbreaks result in defoliation and reduced yields.

Mango fruit fly

Female lays eggs on the fruit surface.

Once the eggs hatch into maggots, they pierce the fruit, penetrate it and feed on it eventually destroying it completely.

Fruit

Fruit rotting, fruit fall

Scales and mealy bugs

Pests excrete honey dew

Fruits

Honey dew/sooty mold leads to ants invasion reducing the quality of fruits due to gummy deposits.

Fruit color changes to black,

Fruit becomes rough thus reducing its marketability.

One of the biopesticide that you can use in your farm to control mango pests (fruit fly, thrips, and mealybugs) is the Metarhizium anisopliae. Real IPM (Kenya) has been working in collaboration with the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (Icipe) and has come up with products made from metarhizium such as: Metarhizium 69, Metarhizium 78 and Metarhizium 62.

The Organic Farmer

Table showing the Best Insecticide for Mango Pests

Pest

Chemical Control

Company Selling the chemical

Mango piercing moth

Lexus 247 SC

Green life Kenya

Kingcode Elite 50 EC

Green life Kenya

Profile 440 EC

Green life Kenya

Mango Gall Midge

Kingcode Elite 50 EC

Green life Kenya

Lexus 247 SC

Green life Kenya

Profile 440 EC

Green life Kenya

Aster Extrim

Amiran Kenya

Kohinor

Amiran Kenya

Mango Weevil

Lexus 247 247 SC

Green life Kenya

Emerald 200 SL

Green life Kenya

Loyalty 700 WDG

Green life Kenya

Kingcode Elite 50 EC

Green life Kenya

Baciguard 16 WDG

Green life Kenya

Pentagon 50 EC

Green life Kenya

Epiton Elite 500 SP

Green life Kenya

Engeo

Syngenta Kenya

Valium Targo

Syngenta Kenya

Pegasus

Syngenta Kenya

Duduthrin

Twiga Chemicals

Asta Extrim

Amiran Kenya

Mango thrips

Dynamec

Syngenta Kenya

Ampligo

Syngenta Kenya

Pyrinex

Amiran Kenya

Aster Extrim

Amiran Kenya

Mango Fruit Fly

Ampligo

Syngenta Kenya

Profile

Green life Kenya

Lexus

Green life Kenya

Duduthrin

Twiga Chemicals

Mango Scale

Actara

Syngenta

Ranger

Green life Kenya

Emerald

Green Life Kenya

Twiga Ace

Twiga Chemicals

Mealy Bugs

Ranger

Green Life

Engeo

Syngenta Kenya

Pegasus

Syngenta Kenya

Twiga Ace

Twiga Chemicals

Thrips

Dynamec

Syngenta Kenya

Dynamec

Syngenta Kenya

Twiga Ace

Twiga Chemicals

Image Showing a Mango Fruit Fly

The Mango fruit fly.

This insect has been a real menace to mango farmers in the country.

It has caused them untold losses (especially farmers who export mangoes), as their produce gets intercepted and rejected in Europe when it is found containing mango fruit fly eggs or larvae.

The rejection of Kenyan mango in Europe became so big that HCA (Horticulture Crops Authority) had to impose a self-ban on export of mangoes to Europe so as protect the Kenya’s s reputation as a horticultural exporter.

That move was absolutely necessary, to protect the country from being totally banned from exporting any fruits to European Union.

Now do you see why mango fruit fly is a serious pest that deserves lots of attention?

I’ve written a more detailed post on how to control mango fruit fly.

If the mango fruit fly is a menace to you, follow this link for more details.

Image showing a mango stone weevil

Mango fruit weevils

This is one of the major pests of mango in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.

The larva which is the damaging stage of the pest, enters the fruit burrowing through the flesh into the seed.

Once it gets inside, it feed on the seed until it becomes a pupa, consequently destroying the seed.

When it attacks the fruit when it is forming during the early stages, this leads to premature fruit fall.

If infestation occurs during the later stages, fruit infestation is very hard to detect.

This is because there are no external signs of infection except for a very small egg laying scar.

Feeding activity in the seed also remains undetected.

The weevils leave the fruit after it has fallen, decayed, or when it is ripe.

For this reason, the yield of the mango tree may not be affected.

When the weevil emerges, it burrows through the flesh into the open leaving a hole in the fruit skin.

This hole serves as an entry point for fungal infection.

The mango seed weevil is a quarantine pest.

Its greatest significance is to interfere with the export of fruit because of quarantine restrictions imposed by the importing countries, and the market requirements of blemish free fruit.

Weevil feeding reduces the ability of the seed to germinate.

Ways of controlling the pest is by applying sticky traps at the upper end of the tree trucks when the trees start flowering to reduce the migration of weevils to branches for egg laying.

Image showing the mango piercing moth

Mango piercing moth

This a destructive pest of ripe and ripening fruit.

For the pest to attack the fruit, it does not need to be fully ripe.

It just needs to be soft enough to be pierced by the moth.

The most unfortunate thing is the moth attacks the fruits during the night.

A fruit that has been affected develops a brown circular rotten area near around tiny puncture hole, and the fruit is absolutely ruined for sale.

Image showing mango gall Midge

Become A Professional Mango Farmer Who Commands Top Prices

  • Earn premium prices for your mango Fruits Even during market gluts
  • Say goodbye to pests and diseases that trouble mango farmers,
  • Learn Mango marketing tricks that will enable you earn top of the dollar prices