Response of Peach Fruit Fly, Bactrocera zonata (Saunders) to the Essential Oil of Cubeb Pepper, Piper cubeba Bojer

Abstract

Peach fruit fly, Bactrocera zonata (Fam: Tephritidae, or: Diptera), is a quarantine insect-pest that infests various commercial fruit and vegetable crops in Egypt. Almost all the monitoring and control strategies of this fly depend on the use of the para-pheromone methyl eugenol (ME) as a sex attractant of male flies. Therefore, the current study aimed to investigate the potential use of the essential oil of berries of cubeb pepper (tailed pepper) (CEO), Piper cubeba (Fam: Piperaceae) as an attractant for B. zonata flies. CEO was extracted using the hydro-distillation scavenging apparatus from cubeb berries and chemically analyzed by GC-MS. The CEO was assayed in the attraction of B. zonata flies compared with the recommended dose of para-pheromone ME. Results showed that ME and the CEO at the different concentrations had attracted male flies and no females. Remarkably, there were no significant differences between ME and crude CEO in attracting the male flies. The GC-MS results revealed about 29 major constituents of CEO; the eugenol was the major constituent (45.88%) of the CEO, followed by 3-methyl-pentane (15.36%), methyl-cyclopentane (9.198%), and methyl eugenol (6.093%). These findings explaine the effective role of CEO as a male attractant of B. zonata and it could be used as an alternative to the ME, which would conserve a huge amount of money spent on buying the chemical ME.