Insecticide resistance monitoring and managment in Florida citrus to maintain sustainable control of Asian citrus psyllid within Citrus Health Managment Areas

Insecticide resistance monitoring and managment in Florida citrus to maintain sustainable control of Asian citrus psyllid within Citrus Health Managment Areas

Report Date: 10/03/2016
Project: 15-038c   Year: 2016
Category: ACP Vector
Author: Lukasz Stelinski
Sponsor: Citrus Research and Development Foundation

The overall goal of this project is to improve insecticide resistance management for Florida populations of Asian citrus psyllid (ACP). We are achieving this through investigations of the mechanisms of resistance, monitoring resistance in the field, development of optimized rotation skills, and evaluations of new tools for implementation into these rotation schedules. One of the major obstacles facing Florida citrus growers is a lack of a sufficient number of modes of action for management of to achieve efficacious and cost-effective rotations season-long. Currently, and unfortunately, this sometimes requires application of the same mode of action more than one time per year. We therefore continue to investigate the psysionlogical consequences and effectiness of alternative modes of action against ACP. The objective of the previous quarter’s research was to determine whether the next generation insecticide, flupyradifurone, induced stress to behavior and hormesis of ACP. Therefore, we investigated thew dose-mortality response of ACP to flupyradifuron and the lethal and sublethal effects of flupyradifurone on flight behavior and hormesis of ACP. Experiments were conducted with both ACP immature stages and adults. Flight behavior of adult ACP was investigated five days after treatment with flupyradifurone. All flight data were collected using a laboratory flight mill apparatus that was custom-made by us for measurement of flight capacity by ACP. Data were automatically recorded onto a computer DATAQ data logger. After recording, the flight number (n), total flight duration (sec.), average and maximum flight speed (m/s), total flight distance (m), flight trial number (n), and time to elapsed to the 1st flight were auantified. We then determined whether there were differences in flight behavior of psyllids as effected by dose of flupyradifurone treatment. Our results indicated that percentage of flyers treated with the LC50 concentration of insecticide was 88.9%; which was 60.0% higher than the control. The number of ACP flying following treatment with LC50 concentration was over 5 times greater than the control. There was a significant difference between the LC50 and control treatments (F = 29.036; t = -2.288; p=0.035) with respect to the number of ACP initiating flight. As compared with control, both average and maximum flight speed of psyllids were increased with treatment at the LC50 concentration of insecticide. However, there was a significant difference in only maximum flight speed statistically (F = 12.592; t = -2.417; p = 0.042). The result indicated that the sulthletal concentration affects ACP flight behavior. For the hormesis research, the experiment was set up in a randomized complete block design comprising five lethal and sublthal concentrations and each concentration was replicated 4 times. Each plants was sprayed with one of five concentrations of flupyradifurone or water until runoff using a handheld atomizer. Plants were allowed to air dry and then exposed to four pairs of adult ACP for mating and oviposition. Thereafter, adults were removed from each plant and the number of eggs laid per plant was recorded under a stereomicroscope. The result indicated that the number of eggs produced per plant significantly affected by concentration of applied flupyradifurone (p <0.001). After exposed to the LC10 and LC25, the number of egg was higher than for the control. The result overall indicated that ACP exposed to sublethal dconcentrations of flupyradifurone show increased hormesis as compared with the control. This insecticide should be an effective additional tool for management of ACP. Further field testing is needed and will be conducted in future testing.


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