The Lamongan Regency is an area in East Java, Indonesia, which often experiences drought, especially in the south. The Corong River basin is located in the southern part of Lamongan, which supplies the irrigation area of the Gondang Reservoir. Drought monitoring in the Corong River basin is very important to ensure the sustainability of the agricultural regions. This study aims to analyse the causal relationship between meteorological and agricultural drought indices represented by standardised precipitation evapotranspiration index ( SPEI) and standard normalisation difference vegetation index ( NDVI), using time series regression. The correlation between NDVI and SPEI lag 4 has the largest correlation test results between NDVI and SPEI lag, which is 0.41. This suggests that the previous four months of meteorological drought impacted the current agricultural drought. A time series regression model strengthens the results, which show a causal relationship between NDVI and SPEI lag. According to the NDVI–SPEI-1 lag 4 time series model, NDVI was influenced by NDVI in the previous 12 periods, and SPEI-1 in the last four periods had a determinant coefficient value of 0.4. This shows that the causal model between SPEI-1 and NDVI shows a fairly strong relationship for drought management in agricultural areas (irrigated areas) and is considered a reliable and effective tool in determining the severity and duration of drought in the study area.

Biological control has a special position in sustainable agriculture that requires continuous exploration and diversification in bio-agents to cope with emerging crop pests. Blattisocius mali is a promising biological control agent against some acarid mites, nematodes and moth pests. This study aimed to examine factors that could increase survival and diminish dispersal of B. mali deprived of its prey, the mold mite Tyrophagus putrescentiae, from cucumber plants. The impact of the presence of males on starving females’ lifespans and the influence of different substrates, i.e., wheat bran, dry yeast pellets, and cattail pollen, on the distribution and survival of starving females in groups with males were examined. Experiments were performed on cucumber leaf platforms in Petri dishes filled with water. The results showed that females lived longer and a lower percentage drowned in water when accompanied by males. On the platforms with the addition of a substrate, the mites mainly stayed within the substrate, and eggs were only recorded in the substrate. They clearly preferred bran over pollen or pollen + yeast pellet aggregations. However, the quality of the substrate deteriorated within the first days, and some mites died of entrapment in the substrates. On the 3rd day, the lowest mean percentage of live individuals was observed on platforms with yeast + pollen (54.4%) followed by pollen (68.9%) alone. At that time, females also stopped laying eggs, and cannibalism towards hatched larvae and adults was observed. By the end of the experiment, 54.67% of the mites had been found dead on the leaf surface, and none of the substrates had significantly influenced their lifespan. The females lived on average 8.19 days and the males 5.06 days. The obtained results are discussed in the context of potential application of B. mali in biological control strategies.