Pests not only attack field crops during the growing season, but also damage grains and other food products stored in granaries. Modified or controlled atmospheres (MAs or CAs) with higher or lower concentrations of atmospheric gases, mainly oxygen (O2), carbon dioxide (CO2), ozone (O3), and nitric oxide (NO), provide a cost-effective method to kill target pests and protect stored products. In this review, the most recent discoveries in the field of MAs are discussed, with a focus on pest control as well as current MA technologies. Although MAs have been used for more than 30 years in pest control and play a role in storage pest management, the specific mechanisms by which insects are affected by and adapt to low O2 (hypoxia) and high carbon CO2 (hypercapnia) are not completely understood. Insect tolerance to hypoxia/anoxia and hypercapnia involves a decrease in aerobic metabolism, including decreased NADPH enzyme activity, and subsequently, decreases in glutathione production and catalase, superoxide dismutase, glutathione-S-transferase, and glutathione peroxidase activities, as well as increases in carboxyl esterase and phosphatase activities. In addition, hypoxia induces energy and nutrient production, and in adapted insects, glycolysis and pyruvate carboxylase fluxes are downregulated, accompanied with O2 consumption and acetate production. Consequently, genes encoding various signal transduction pathway components, including epidermal growth factor, insulin, Notch, and Toll/Imd signaling, are downregulated. We review the changes in insect energy and nutrient sources, metabolic enzymes, and molecular pathways in response to modified O2, CO2, NO, and O3 concentrations, as well as the role of MAs in pest control. This knowledge will be useful for applying MAs in combination with temperature control for pest control in stored food products.
Chinese chestnut trees (Castanea mollissima BL.) planted in a suburb of Beijing, China developed symptoms including yellowing, leaf crinkling, little leaf, shortened internodes, and empty burrs. Transmission electron microscopy revealed presence of phytoplasma cells in phloem sieve elements of the symptomatic chestnut trees. Molecular cloning and sequence analysis of PCR-amplified near-full length 16S rRNA gene indicated that the phytoplasma associated with the Chinese chestnut yellow crinkle disease is closely related to Japanese chestnut witchesÕ-broom phytoplasma. This is the first report of a phytoplasmal disease in Chinese chestnut trees.
The cigarette beetle, Lasioderma serricorne (Fabricius), is an important pest of stored commodities and distributed widely in the world. Here, we report the complete mitochondrial genome of L. serricorne which was 15,958 bp and composed of 13 protein-coding genes (PCGs), two rRNA genes, 22 tRNA genes and a control region. The gene order and orientation of L. serricorne were identical to those of other Coleopteran mitogenomes. ATG, ATA, ATT, ATC, TTG were initiation codons and TAA, TAG, T were termination codons. All 22 tRNA genes were predicted with a typical cloverleaf structure except for trnS 1 (AGN). Phylogenetic analysis performed using 13 PCGs with 14 other beetles showed that L. serricorne is closely related to Stegobium paniceum, which agree with the conventional taxonomy.
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