Artificially applied plant volatile organic compou

Authors: Fabrice C Lamy Denis Poinsot AnneMarie Cortesero Sébastien Dugravot

Publish Date: 2016/07/06

Volume: 90, Issue: 2, Pages: 611-621

PDF Link

Abstract

The use of volatile organic compounds VOCs derived from plants to manipulate insect pest behavior can be applied in an integrated pest management strategy IPM using a combination of attractive and repulsive stimuli The “push–pull” strategy was developed on this idea in order to disturb and modify the distribution and abundance of pests to protect crops and reduce the use of agrochemicals This field experiment investigates in a “push–pull” context using broccoli as a target crop and Chinese cabbage as a pull component the stimulodeterrent effect of five synthetic VOCs dimethyl disulfide linalool geraniol eucalyptol and citronellol on the oviposition of the cabbage root fly Delia radicum With the exception of linalool all compounds tested had a significant effect in the field and eucalyptol showed the most promising results reducing oviposition on broccoli by 45  Moreover eucalyptol was the only VOC able to reduce the final infestation of D radicum ie the number of pupae The other VOCs reduced oviposition by 20–30  No adverse effect of the treatments was found on major parasitoids Trybliographa rapae and Aleochara bipustulata and potential predators of D radicum This study highlights the potential of VOCs as deterrent stimuli against agricultural pests in the fieldWe thank the staff of the ‘Domaine experimental de la Motte’ INRA Center Le Rheu France and especially Gabriel Nedelec for his advice and help with the field experiment The authors acknowledge Charline Ridard and Eileen Gazengel for the precious help provided during the monitoring of the experiment

Keywords: