<![CDATA[The problem of bark eating caterpillar, Indarbela quadrinotata infestation has been observed from variety of horticulture and forest tree species in India. The estimation of infestation of this caterpillar using conventional sampling methods was found difficult because counting the number of caterpillar in each tree is practically not feasible. Ranked set sampling (RSS) is a cost efficient method which provides improved estimators of mean and variance when actual measurement of the observations is difficult to obtain but a reasonable ranking of the units in the sample is relatively easy. In the present study, poplar, Populus deltoides plantation of Western Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand was taken for the assessment of Indarbela quadrinotata infestation. The RSS estimator of population mean and variance have been discussed and compared with the corresponding estimators from simple random sampling (SRS). The relative precision (RP) of RSS procedure with respect to the SRS for four different set sizes of k = 3, 5, 7, and 10 has been deliberated. It was seen that RP increase with the increment in k. The method of RSS was found suitable for the assessment of insect pest infestation.Keywords: Indarbela quadrinotata, Populus deltoides, simple random sampling, ranked set sample, order statistics.]]>
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