Planthopper Outbreaks in Different Paddy Ecosystems in Asia: Man-Made Hopper Plagues that Threatened the Green Revolution in Rice

Abstract

The brown planthopper (BPH), Nilaparvata lugens (Stål), and whitebacked planthopper (WBPH), Sogatella frucifera (Horváth), are the rice monophagous species, which are inevitably associated with rice agriculture in Asia. In the 1970s, BPH suddenly occurred as the most preeminent insect pest of rice and threaten the green revolution in the tropical Asia. The BPH outbreaks in Southeast Asia were caused by disruption of ecological balance between BPH and natural enemies by insecticides, which were accepted as a technical component to ensure the high-yielding output of high-yielding varieties (HYVs) in the tropical paddy ecosystems. The outbreaks in India are primarily attributed to disruption of coevolutional interactions between BPH and local rice plants in the monsoon-prevailing paddy ecosystems by abrupt replacement of BPH-resistant traditional rice varieties with susceptible exotic HYVs by the high-yielding varieties program. Unsuccessful deployment of BPH-resistant IR varieties was critically reviewed in relation to the standardized seedbox screening test (SSST), which had been exclusively used to breed BPH-resistant IR varieties. Sixteen of 19 IR varieties incorporated with the Bph1 and bph2 genes were easily defeated with emergence of adaptive BPH biotypes so that their sequential releases could not stop BPH outbreaks. Only a few varieties such as IR36 and IR64 were found to have durable field resistance to BPH even after breakdown of their monogenic resistance. Field performance of IR36 and IR64 indicated that they have some other resistance traits that cannot be evaluated by the SSST. Incapability to evaluate field resistance traits commits a risk of insidious erosion of those traits during the process of SSST-dependent breeding. That could be a reason for a tentative resistance in most of the BPH-resistant IR varieties. WBPH outbreaks in Punjab plain, prevalence of WBPH and WBPHvectored new virus disease in China and Vietnam, and ovicidal resistance to WBPH in japonica rice were referred with special reference to the wind-borne massive displacement biology of WBPH in the active monsoon rice areas.K. Sogawa (*) 429-42 Kamiyokoba, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-0854, Japan

Review: The impact of social and economic change on domesticated plant diversity with special reference to wet rice field and home-garden farming of West Java, Indonesia

“…About 43 year after firstly reported the brown planthopper serious attack the rice as in 1970s, until now it has not been totally eradicated due to many factors, such as loss of natural enemies due to intensive use of pesticides and the pest become resistant due to the use of inappropriate pesticide doses (cf. Fox 1991;Baehaki 2012;Sogawa 2015;Tauruslina et al 2015;Winarto 2016). In addition, it has caused other factors, such as home organization of planting rice, and irregular and uncooperative rice cropping pattern, and continues intensive rice cultivation without intermittent with other non-rice cultivation.…”

Ecological fitness of brown planthopper, Nilaparvata lugens (Stål), to rice nutrient management

“…Its outbreaks in rice fields have intensified in the last decade, due to disruption of ecological balance (Sogawa 2015). Nutrition management is one of the most important practices for high production system of rice and consequently affects host-insect interaction by altering their ecology (Lu and Heong 2009).…”

“…However, it dramatically came out as a major insect pest of high-yielding varieties (HYVs) of rice (Bottrell and Schoenly 2012). Planthopper outbreaks in rice fields have intensified in the last decade resulting in heavy rice yield losses (Chakravarthy et al 2013;Sogawa 2015).…”

Incidence of Brown Plant Hopper in the Rice Field with the Use of Different Doses of Fertilizers

“…N also boosts the tiller formation, which provides the conditions for the outbreak of the planthopper. The nymphs of BPH highly intensified the plants which were fertilized with more dose of N and reproductive rate of progeny is high as compared to those plants which were less fertilized with N. Significant impact of N levels on the incidence of BPH population was also recorded by (Sogawa et al, 2015). With the increase in nitrogen dose the survival rate of BPH from egg-nymph-adult was increased.…”