Diversity and Damage Assessment of Snail in Cultivated Crops of Neelabut Bagh Azad Jammu And Kashmir (Pakistan)

The present study was conducted to study diversity and damage assessment of snails in cultivated crops and ornamental plants. The study revealed two types of snail species Macrochlamys indica and Indoplanorbis exustus in the study area. The sampled plots of tomato, Karam, Palak, Dhania, Maize, Fresh beans, Sunflowers, Aloe Vera, Loki, Pumpkin, Bitter guard, Kheera, Kachmach, Hund were taken. The study revealed that at Neelabut, when 39 plants of Fresh beans were examined out of them 18 were found damaged and the damage percentage was 46%, 38 plants of sunflowers were examined and 17 (45%) were found damaged, 85 plants of tomato were examined and 11 (12.94%) were found damaged, 82 plants of Karam were examined and 12 ( 15%) were found damaged, 62 plants of Palak were examined and 16 (25%) were found damaged, 51 plants of maize were examined and 15 (29%) were found damaged. The snail is pest in the study area and measures should be taken to manage them through ecofriendly programs.


INTRODUCTION
Snails are found at an altitude of up to 1830 meters and preferred habitats are chalk and limestone fields, grapevine gardens bushes, and moist parks with daily temperatures but not heavy rains or direct sunlight. Snails are also largely deficient in the food supply in deciduous and mixed forests in coniferous forests. They prefer to live on alkaline, calcareous soils. An open and semi-open-area species is Helix pomatia.
Some snails inhabit anthropogenic sites such as urban parks, orchards, cemeteries, garbage heap communities, and various sections of wastelands, in addition to natural and woodland edge areas, riparian woods, and meadows in river valleys and around bodies of water (Stepczak, 1976).
Snails are the micro-arthropods environmental and prey indicators and are important for the functioning of the ecosystem (Coleman et al., 2007). Snails in some parts of the world are agricultural pests, human health pests, and cause significant declines in biodiversity (Yeung and Hayes, 2018). Crop pests control field crops, fruits, cereals, ornamental plants, maize, roots, and leaves in agriculture (El-Okda, 1981).
A lot of studies on invertebrates are present in Azad Jammu and Kashmir such as diversity of invertebrate (Hassan et al., 2018, Faiz et al., 2019 but the present study was carried out to determine the population density and damage assessment of land snail.

Study Area
The Dhirkot subdivision is situated in the southwest of the Bagh District, a town in the Bagh District, Azad Kashmir, Pakistan. It is 25 km away from Kohala, 63 km away from Muzffarabad, and 132 km away from Islamabad. Having latitudes north of 34.0357° or 34° 2 '8.5' and longitudes east of 73.5798 ° or 73 ° 34 '47.2. The Dhirkot subdivision is located at an elevation of 1629 meters (5344 ft.). The weather of this region is a subtropical moist and moderately humid, by extreme rainfall in July (95.5 mm) and August (89.0 mm respectively. Due to its position at high altitudes, the weather remains good in summer. June and July are the hottest months, with average temperatures of 25 °C and 24 °C correspondingly. The high temperature often increases to 29 °C. January and February are the coldest months, and average temperature is 5.4°C.

Surveyed Sites
The sample plots of crops, ornamental plants and wild vegetation at sites Narwal, Dhirkot, and Neelabut were selected .The snail was sampled by visual encounter method and for damage assessment one plot on each site were selected. The damage assessment of snail was done by following formula: Damage assessment= (infested plants / Total plants) × 100

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The study documents two types of snail Macrochlamys Indica and Indoplanorbis exustus in three study sites. Snail damage assessment in ornamental plants, Aloe arbadensian, Tagetes, Cestrumnocturnum, Viola oderata is given in Table 1.

TNP (Total number of plants) D (Damaged plants) UD (Undamaged plants)
The damage in Maize (Zea mays), Fresh beans (Phaseolus vulgaris), Sunflower (Helianthus) and Mustard (Brassica nigra), though a total number of 163 plants were examined among them 61 were found damaged total percentage of damaged plants were 37.42% (Table 3). Though a total number of 247 plants (Wines) were examined among them 100 were found damaged total percentage of damaged plants were 40.48% (Table 4).

DISCUSSION
Our study reports two type of snail exist in the study area and similar type of reports exist in Indian Kashmir (Allaie et al., 2019).Type one is horn type snail (Macrochlamys Indica), (Indoplanorbis exustus). The distribution of these two species has been reported by (Allaie et al., 2019) in central Kashmir at Srinagar. The study site NeelaBut is at distance of 40 km from Srinagar. The present study describe the pest nature of snail of vegetable crops, ornamental plants and coniferous forest while the pest nature of snail have been described by a number of studies (Jagtap et al., 2000).
Our study reports pest nature of snail in Cucurbita maxima, Bottle guard, Momrdica Charantia, Cucumus sativus whereas similar reports of damage to vegetable have been reported by various authors (Kaur et al., 2014). Our study reports pest nature of snail in ornamental plants, Aloe arbadensian, Tagetes, Cestrum nocturnum, Viola oderata whereas similar reports of damage to ornamental plant nurseries, fodder crops have been reported by (Shilpa et al., 2012) in his PH.D research work.
Our study reports pest nature of snail in fodder crops Zea mays, Phaseolus vulgaris, Helianthus, Brassica nigra whereas similar reports of damage to ornamental plant nurseries, fodder crops have been reported by (Shilpa et al., 2012) in his PH.D research work. Our results indicate that nature and extent of damage goes increase with increase in population density of snail and among two species of snail the horn type of snail (Macrochlamys Indica), is dominant over the species (Indoplanorbis exustus). The horn type of snail (Macrochlamys Indica) prefer shady areas with moist places while the (Indoplanorbis exustus) prefer drier habitat sunny areas. Both two species are found to exist in some study sites but in coexistence sites only (Indoplanorbis exustus) was dominant and found in abundance while the horn type of snail (Macrochlamys Indica) was too much less in numbers in such areas.

CONCLUSION
The present study is base line study that provide diversity and damage caused by snail in Azad Jammu and Kashmir. The present study documents, damage caused by snail which is unnoticed and need attention to control by ecofriendly method.