A novel plant volatile attractant scheme to protect corn in China from the white-spotted flower chafer (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Cetoniinae)

Abstract

Adult white-spotted flower chafers (WSFC), Protaetia brevitarsis, feed on developing sweet corn ears in China causing extensive losses in quality and quantity. Considering these losses, the lack of natural enemies caused by excessive past chemical pesticide use and a complete lack of present insecticides for acceptable use against WSFC on developing sweet corn, it is important to find novel measures for controlling this serious pest. The attractiveness of eight compounds, mainly phenolic compounds, fruit esters, acetoin, and some aliphatic alcohols, was established in a specially designed olfactometer. Subsequently, rubber dispensers containing 40-mg of those attractive compounds were hung in field plots on 12 sweet corn ears on the borders and down the center of 11 9 9.6-m plots comprised of 615 plants. One day later, the same ears were sprayed with Malathion. These attract-and-kill plots were maintained in 2006, 2007, and 2008, and provided substantial protection of non-treated ears in the same field. The mean damage value (DV from 0: none to 3: [5% eaten ears) and percent of damaged ears in the treated fields (DV: 0.8 ± 0.3, 0.8 ± 0.3, and 0.7 ± 0.3; % damage: 19.4, 19.4, and 19.0%) was significantly lower than that in control plots (DV: 1.8 ± 0.2, 2.0 ± 0.1, and 1.7 ± 0.1; % damage: 92.1, 89.7, and 95.0%) for 2006-2008. This attract-and-kill method gives sweet corn growers a method to protect their crops.

Japanese beetle lures used alone or combined with structurally related chemicals to trap NE China scarabs (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae)

“…brevitarsis and Pop. quadriguttata provided the possibility of considerable control (Chen and Li, 2011;Chen et al, 2013b), and additional research on mass trapping Pop. quadriguttata also has been encouraging during the 2012-2013 soybean growing seasons (Chen et al, 2014).…”

“…brevitarsis and Pop. quadriguttata have gradually become increasingly important agricultural pests in the corn and soybean fields, respectively, and have received recent attention (Chen and Li, 2011;Chen et al, 2013bChen et al, , 2014. More importantly, H. diomphalia, H. morosa, Pot.…”

“…The attractiveness of the three combinations of Trécé lures were compared to fresh corn ear, corn silk, corn leaf, soybean leaf, and cabbage leaf in a laboratory olfactometer, similar to the one used in previous studies (Chen and Li, 2011). The primary difference here was that the choice chamber was separated into nine chambers by foam boards, where the attractants or host materials were randomly placed.…”

“…The most important scarabs in East-Asia are Potosia (Liocola) brevitarsis (Lewis), Popillia quadriguttata (Fabricius), Holotrichia diomphalia Bates et al, and Anomala corpulenta Motschulsky et al (Sang, 1979;Reed et al, 1991;Wang et al, 1999;Lee et al, 2002;Hao and Ren, 2003;Oh et al, 2003;Chen and Li, 2011;Chen et al, 2013bChen et al, , 2014. Scarabs as either adults, larvae, or both may cause damage.…”

“…Furthermore, structurally related chemicals have shown attraction to several additional scarab species (Allsopp and Cherry, 1991;Cherry et al, 1996;Crocker et al, 1999;Williams et al, 2000;Toth et al, 2003;Chen and Li, 2011).…”