Insect cultures maintained under laboratory conditions on semisynthetic diets after 4 - 5 generations often experience reduced vigor, survival, fecundity, and egg hatching, even difficulties in molting under certain environmental conditions. Sterols have a major influence on growth and development of insects, and they must meet the sterol requirements from the food source. Therefore, we studied the effect of varying concentrations of different sterols and their combination in a chickpea flour based semi-synthetic artificial diet for maintaining a vigorous and healthy culture of the legume pod borer, Helicoverpa armigera. There was no significant effect of different concentrations of stigmasterols in the artificial diet on larval survival, pupation, adult emergence and fecundity of H. armigera. Larval survival was 95.8 - 100% in diets with cholesterol as compared to 87.5 % survival on the control diet. However, adult emergence did not differ significantly between the cholesterol impregnated and control diets. Highest fecundity (509.8 eggs per female) was observed in insects reared on diets with 0.25% cholesterol in first generation, and 0.2% cholesterol in the second generation (638.6 eggs per female). Cent percent larval survival was recorded in insects reared on a diet containing all the sterols, and also in diets with the β-sitosterol, followed by the insects reared on diets with the cholesterol and stigmasterol (97.9%). Adult emergence ranged from 68.75 to 79.17%, and there were no significant differences among the diets tested. The fecundity was greater (540.2 eggs/female) in the diets containing β-sitosterol, followed by diet containing all the sterols (509.5 eggs/female). Lowest fecundity was recorded in insects reared on the control diet (436.7 eggs/female). Although there were no much significant differences in survival and development of H. armigera on diets containing varying concentrations of different sterols, the larval survival and pupation increased in diets containing different sterols as compared to the control diet, in addition to that increased fecundity recorded on diets with cholesterol, and a combination of all the sterols. Therefore, it is important to have optimum amounts of the sterols in the artificial diets to maintain insect vigor and fecundity.