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- Title
Evaluation of a Push–Pull Strategy for Spotted-Wing Drosophila Management in Highbush Blueberry.
- Authors
Gale, Cody C.; Ferguson, Beth; Rodriguez-Saona, Cesar; Shields, Vonnie D. C.; Zhang, Aijun
- Abstract
Simple Summary: The spotted-wing drosophila (SWD), Drosophila suzukii, is an invasive pest of soft-skinned fruits that has rapidly spread across the globe and causes hundreds of millions of dollars in crop losses worldwide. Today, the management of SWD heavily relies on the application of synthetic pesticides, which are potentially hazardous to humans, animals, other organisms, and the environment. A natural-product-based sustainable integrated pest management approach is urgently needed to reduce conventional synthetic pesticide usages. A promising behavior-based control method is the "push–pull" strategy, which uses a repellent to drive pests away from fruits (push) and towards SWD attractant-baited mass trapping devices (pull). Methyl benzoate, a naturally occurring chemical found in many plants and FDA-approved food additives, was found to be repellent to SWD in laboratory tests. In this study, we tested whether this compound could also be used to protect blueberries from SWD injury in the field. Our results demonstrated that methyl benzoate as a spatial repellent/oviposition deterrent can be deployed in blueberry fields to reduce the damage caused by SWD, although this repellent is not sufficient to act as a control strategy alone and will need to be integrated with other strategies to provide adequate protection to growers. We evaluated a novel push–pull control strategy for protecting highbush blueberry, Vaccinium corymbosum, against spotted-wing drosophila (SWD), Drosophila suzukii. Methyl benzoate (MB) was used as the pushing agent and a previously tested SWD attractive blend of lure-scents was used as the pulling agent. MB dispensers (push) were hung in the canopy and lure-scent dispensers (pull) were hung in yellow jacket traps filled with soapy water around the blueberry bushes. Blueberries were sampled weekly, and any infestation was inspected by examining the breathing tubes of SWD eggs which protrude through the skin of infested fruit. The frequency of infestation, i.e., the proportion of berries infested with at least one egg, and the extent of infestation, i.e., the mean number of eggs in infested berries, were significantly reduced in treatments receiving MB dispensers as a pushing agent when infestation rates were very high. However, the mass trapping devices as a pulling agent did not provide comparable protection on their own and did not produce additive protection when used in combination with the MB dispensers in push–pull trials. We conclude that MB has the potential to be implemented as a spatial repellent/oviposition deterrent to reduce SWD damage in blueberry under field conditions and does not require the SWD attractant as a pulling agent to achieve crop protection.
- Subjects
UNITED States. Food &; Drug Administration; VACCINIUM corymbosum; BLUEBERRIES; DROSOPHILA suzukii; FRUIT skins; DROSOPHILA; METHYL benzoate
- Publication
Insects (2075-4450), 2024, Vol 15, Issue 1, p47
- ISSN
2075-4450
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.3390/insects15010047