Symptoms of damage:

• Thickening and malformation of vines and often cracking of the tissue.
• Discoloration, cracking, or wilting of damaged wines
• An infested tuber is often riddled with cavities or tunnels
• Attacked tubers become spongy, brownish to blackish in appearance
• Start rotting form the top and develop an unpleasant smell and a bitter taste
• Unfit for human consumption.

Identification of pest:

• Egg: Oval, yellowish-white laid singly in small cavities on the sweet potato root or base of the vine. The cavity is then sealed with a plug of the mother's excrement
• Larva: Legless grub, white in colour. Head is comparatively large and brown or pale yellow
• Pupa: Pupa is whitish in colour and pupation takes place in the feeding tunnel
• Adult: Weevils are beetles with a long pointed snout, body is slender resembling ants

Management:

• Crop rotation with rice between two sweet potato
• Use insect-free vines as planting material
• Harvest the crop immediately after maturity
• Avoid or minimise cracks in the soil
• Flooding of infested fields for at least 48 hours after completing harvest drowns weevils induces rotting of the left over plant materials and thereby reduces weevil densities
• Remove alternate host, Ipomea sp and destroy them.
• Mulch with leaves of Eupatorium @3 tonnes/ha at 30 DAP
• Use cut sweet potato tubers (100g) as trap during 50-80 DAP at 10 days interval
• Set the trap at 5 m apart at 4 PM, collect and destroy adult weevils at 6 AM next day
• Rake up the soil and earth up at 50 days after planting