Bottom-up effects of irrigation, fertilization and plant resistance on Tuta absoluta: implications for Integrated Pest Management

Abstract

Soil abiotic factors and plant traits are able to trigger bottom-up effects along the tri-trophic interaction plant-herbivore-natural enemy. The consequences could be useful for controlling the insect herbivores. The South American tomato pinworm Tuta absoluta (Meyrick) (Lepidoptera: Gelechiidae), a devastating invasive pest on tomato and other Solanaceae plants, is currently threatening the tomato production worldwide. Recent knowledge on bottom-up effects on this pest has been gained, with fertilization, irrigation, plant traits, as well as their interactions being the major sources of these effects. Evidence is now emerging on how they impact on the performances of the moth from the perspective of tri-trophic interactions. In this review, we summarize the essential experiments studying the bottom-up effects on T. absoluta and discuss the implications of those findings for the integrated pest management programs. Future promising research directions are then proposed.

Tuta absoluta(Meyrick) (Lepidoptera: Gelechiidae): An Invasive Insect Pest Threatening the World Tomato Production

“…However, the efficacy of natural enemies in suppressing T. absoluta populations may be altered by environmental abiotic factors through bottom-up effects triggered by agronomic practices such as irrigation and fertilization. Moreover, plant constitutive and/or induced resistance traits against T. absoluta are another source of bottom-up effects, which may interact with irrigation and fertilization and jointly affect the performance and population density of T. absoluta, and counterpart natural enemies and their interactions [37]. In addition to the arthropod biocontrol agents, microbial biocontrol agents such as entomopathogenic nematode (EPN) of the genera Steinernema and Heterohabditis have potential to kill larvae of TLM when they are outside their mines.…”

“…RNA interference (RNAi) is a biological mechanism that leads to posttranscriptional gene silencing directed by the presence of double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) molecules [53]. Biotechnically, sterile insect technique (SIT) may also be used for the management of TLM [37]. However, this technique may be compromised if field populations of T. absoluta can reproduce by deuterotokous parthenogenesis [17].…”

Predation and reproduction of the generalist predator Nabis pseudoferus preying on Tuta absoluta

“…The South American tomato pinworm, Tuta absoluta (Meyrick) (Lepidoptera: Gelechiidae), is a major invasive pest of tomato (Biondi et al, 2018), and also attacks other solanaceous crops and weeds (Cherif et al, 2019; Sylla et al, 2019). Since 2006, this pest has been increasingly reported in most of Europe, Africa, and Asia (Campos et al, 2017; Mansour et al, 2018; Santana et al, 2019; Han et al, 2019a,b), and it is currently threatening two major tomato producer countries, USA and China (Tabuloc et al, 2019; Verheggen & Fontus, 2019; Han et al, 2019b). In Iran, this pest was initially detected in November 2010 and then quickly invaded all provinces within just 13 months (Javadi Emamzadeh & Cheraghian, 2013; Han et al, 2019a).…”

Influence of Age, Host Plant and Mating Status in Pheromone Production and New Insights on Perception Plasticity in Tuta Absoluta

“…In addition, T. absoluta can also attack potato crops [14,15,16]. Several integrated control measures against T. absoluta are being used, e.g., biological control [1,2], essential oils with insecticidal activity [17,18], or optimized agronomic practices, such as fertilization [19,20]. However, in most cases insecticide applications have been required for an effective pest control [21,22] but resistance development has been widely reported [3,23].…”