This document summarizes the morphology and life cycle of lac insects. It describes the key characteristics of male and female lac insects and notes that females are larger, lack eyes and wings, and have piercing/sucking mouthparts. The life cycle is described as taking 6 months and involving an egg, nymph, and adult stage. The nymph is the most active stage, called the crawler. Traditional and modern methods of lac production are also summarized, with the modern method involving dividing plants into parts and harvesting lac from them sequentially.

1.  PRESENTATIONS TOPIC: Morphology and biology
of lac insect.
 Presented To. Mr. Mithilesh kumar Pandey
Presented By. Dharmendra Kumar
B.Sc. (Hons.) Agriculture 6th Sem
1923770

2. Morphology of lac
insect
Life cycle
Method of lac
production

3. Male
 Size 1.2-1.5mm
 Color pink red
 Types – Winged and wingless
 Life 3-4 days
Characters
 Head – large developed mouth part but inactive.
 Eyes – two payers
 Antinae – long 10 segment and having hair like structure.
 Thorax – broad and one pair of wings and three pair of leg.
 Abdomen – 8 segment, chitinious, pointed at end

4. Female
 Size – 4 to 5mm
 Colour – pink
 Ventral surface – flat
 Dorsal surface – raised
Character
 Body indistinctly divided into head, thorax & abdomen.
Head bears one pair of degenerated antinae, three to four segment.
 Eye absent
 Mouth part – piercing and sucking
 Posterior of mouth lie a pair of of spricles which ensure smooth
breathing of insect during lac secretion.

5.  Thorax has degenerated legs and lack wings.
 At posterior part of body a triangular area the anal tubercle
encircling some setae is present.
 Near to anal tubercle present two branching appearing called
dorsal spine.

6.  Six month
 Incomplete metamorphism
Egg
 Size – length 0.4mm breadth 0.2
 Female lay egg 200 to 500
 Egg laying period -7 to 10 days
 Eggs are fully developed and start hatching immediately
 Lac stop to lay egg at temperature below 17 degree. Cen. In
summer and at below 15 degree cent in winter.
Life cycle

7. Nymph
 Size – 0.6 mm
 Most active
 Called as crawler
 Boat shaped and divisible into head thorax and abdomen
 Head bear antennae , ocelli, mouth part
 Thorax 3 segmented each with 3 pair legs
 3 instar

8.  Method of lac production
1. Traditional method
It is traditional method of cutting the Lac, in which Lac is produced
by cutting the whole plant there is no precautions about Lac insect.
The result in loss of Lac insect, and huge loss of crop in future. This
method is mainly used in tribes area.
2. Modern method
It is a scientific method of Lac production which is given by Indian
Lac Research Institute, Ranchi, Jharkhand. In this method plants are
divided into 3 to 4 parts and the Lac is produced from them one by
one. It is known as Coupe system.

9. SCIENTIFIC METHOD OF LAC CULTIVATION
To start lac cultivation, two things are mainly to be taken into
consideration:
a. The suitable host plant on which the lac insect thrives
b. b. Availability of healthy brood lac in time MAJOR LAC
CULTIVATION OPERATIONS/PRACTICES
1. Selection of suitable host plants
2. Infestation of lac hosts (inoculation)
3. Removing of used-up broodlac sticks (Phunki)
4. Insect pest management
5. Harvesting
6. Scraping of lac from twigs