Pollen Alone or a Mixture of Pollen Types? Assessing Their Suitability for Mass Rearing of Neoseiulus cucumeris (Acari: Phytoseiidae) Over 20 Generations

Abstract

The generalist predatory mite, Neoseiulus cucumeris (Oudemans) is known as one of the most effective natural enemies on many pests. This economically important biocontrol agent was reared for 20 generations on date palm and castor bean pollen as well as a mixture of pollen types, including date palm, castor bean, and almond. The performance of this predator was evaluated by comparing its life table parameters after different generations (G1–G20) fed on each diet in a laboratory at 25 ± 1°C, 60 ± 5% RH, and a photoperiod of 16:8 (L: D) h. The development time of the predator reared on all tested diets had no significant difference in G20. The intrinsic rate of increase (r) of N. cucumeris by feeding on the mixed pollen (0.197 day−1) was significantly higher than that on castor bean, or date palm pollen (0.146 or 0.152 day−1 in G1, respectively). Our results indicated that the predator’s performance was not affected by long-term feeding on the pollen diets, as well as there was no considerable difference between pollen alone and pollen mixture diets. Furthermore, mites reared on pollen diets had higher quality than those reared on natural prey, Tetranychus urticae Koch.

Long-term effects of saffron pollen on development, reproduction and predation capacity of Neoseiulus cucumeris (Acari: Phytoseiidae)

“…According to the results, male longevity was longer than female longevity in G10 and G20 by feeding either on saffron pollen or T. urticae. Long longevity of N. cucumeris's males has already been recorded when it was fed with almond pollen (Yazdanpanah et al 2021), date and castor bean pollen (Yazdanpanah et al 2022a), and T. urticae (Yazdanpanah et al 2022b). In addition, other phytoseiid mites such as Amblyseius swirskii (Athias-Henriot) reared on almond pollen (Ansari-Shiri et al 2022) and cattail pollen (Hadadi et al 2022), and Neoseiulus californicus (McGregor) fed on pollen of blooming wild almond, walnut, saffron, pomegranate as well as T. urticae (Eini et al 2022) had longer male longevity than females.…”

“…Although, several studies have been conducted in the field of long-term rearing of N. cucumris on different pollens such as almond pollen (Yazdanpanah et al 2021), castor bean and date palm pollens (Yazdanpanah et al 2022a), and cattail pollen (Gravandian et al 2022), no study has been carried out on saffron pollen as a food source of N. cucumris. Therefore, the current study aimed to discover the performance of N. cucumeris on saffron pollen during successive generations and determine its predation capacity on Tetranychus urticae Koch as a main prey after 10 and 20 generations of rearing on saffron pollen.…”

How mixture of plant and prey diets affects long-term rearing of predatory mite Neoseiulus cucumeris (Acari: Phytoseiidae)

“…Among the diets tested in this study, the diet of TP (total mean of r = 0.182) was the most suitable supplement for the predator followed by the TCb diet (total mean of r = 0.179), TD diet (total mean of r = 0.176), TA diet (total mean of r = 0.174), TC diet (total mean of r = 0.168), and finally the diet of TS (total mean of r = 0.144). The total mean of the r parameter of N. cucumeris reared on T. putrescentiae as a source of animal protein (0.137 day –1 ) (Yazdanpanah et al 2022a) was less than the total mean of r of the predator long-term reared on pollen diets (0.167 day –1 ) (Gravandian et al 2022, Yazdanpanah et al 2021, 2022b, Naqshbandi et al 2023), and it was less than the mean of r in the current study by feeding on pollen plus stored product mite, T. putrescentiae (0.171 day –1 ). Although protein intake is required for reproduction in the phytoseiid mites (Lundgren 2009), protein alone cannot be a key indicator to reveal the prey nutritional quality for N. cucumeris , because the quality of prey diet increased when it was supplemented with pollen which furnished most of the essential nutrients sufficiently, as needed to N. cucumeris for its survival and reproduction.…”

“…In contrast to type I and II phytoseiid species, type III and IV species are fed with pollen as supplementary or alternative food source in applied biological control to avoid any cannibalism when prey gets scarce (van Rijn et al 2002). The role of pollen from different plants as nonprey food sources for various generalist predatory phytoseiid mites in both field and laboratory has been well documented (Yazdanpanah et al 2022b). Pollen can promote juvenile survival of phytoseiids and increase their reproduction especially in cases that predators may have difficulties in seizing large prey stages (Sabelis and van Rijn 1997).…”

“…Neoseiulus cucumeris (Oudemans), a type III generalist phytoseiid (McMurtry et al 2013), has a considerable interest in using, because of its adaptation to integrated pest management programs (Ranabhat et al 2014). Although previous studies indicated that different diets including pollen of almond (Yazdanpanah et al 2021), cattail (Gravandian et al 2022), castor bean, date (Yazdanpanah et al 2022b), and saffron (Naqshbandi et al 2023) as well as the factitious prey Tyrophagus putrescentiae (Schrank) (Yazdanpanah et al 2022a) seem to be a promising candidate for mass rearing of N. cucumeris , the effects of mixed diets of animal and plant sources on this predator over several generations are scarcely known. In theory, the combination of high-quality pollen with prey would positively affect biological control, therefore we compared the profitability of different types of mixing alternative food from plant and prey sources (pollen plus T. putrescentiae ) for rearing of N. cucumeris .…”