Systemic control efficacy of neonicotinoids seeds dressing on English grain aphid (Hemiptera: Aphididae)
Graphical abstract
Introduction
Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) is one of the most important food crops on the world (Lucas and Budak, 2012). In China, wheat is the third-largest food crop, after rice and maize, with winter wheat covers 24.26 million ha (Wang et al., 2009; Xu et al., 2013). English grain aphid, Sitobion avenae (F.), is a serious pest of wheat in China. It causes low yield and transmits plant viruses by piercing and sucking the leaves and wheat ears.
Spraying insecticides is the main management method against aphids (Elbert et al., 1998; Gopal et al., 2002). Because of the systemicity, long-lasting control and wide range of pest control abilities, neonicotinoids has been used to control a wide range of agricultural pests, especially the sucking-piercing insect pests, e.g. whitefly, thrips, aphid pests (Elbert et al., 2008; Albajes et al., 2003; Sur and Stork, 2003). However, application of insecticides may have negative impacts, such as the development of insecticide resistance and impacts on non-target insects. In agroecosystem, natural enemies can play a role in suppressing insect pest populations, but the numbers of some natural enemies can be adversely affected by spraying nonselective insecticides (Tillman and Mulrooney, 2000). Insecticidal seed treatments were alternative to foliar spray, have been applied in field. It was found safer to natural enemies and also did not exhibit phytoxicity to crop (Ahmed et al., 2014; Sarkar and Maity, 2017).
As also having the high root absorption activity (Elbert et al., 2008), neonicotinoids were frequently used by seed treatments, which was supposed to require less active ingredient and reduce exposure of the insecticide to the user and the environment (Nault et al., 2004). Imidacloprid is the first member of the neonicotinoid family and also the largest used one of the neonicotinoids (Elbert et al., 1991). Imidacloprid was initially used as a spray application for controlling foliar pests. Drinkwater (1994) first reported that imidacloprid could be applied as a soil treatment to control soil and foliar pests. Subsequently, imidacloprid was widely used to protect wheat (Royer et al., 2005), maize (Altmann, 2003), cotton (El-Hamady et al., 2008), soybean (Ohnesorg et al., 2009), sunflower (Laurent and Rathahao, 2003), and fruit trees (Setamou et al., 2010) from pest attack according to root application or seed dressing methods. Precious research studies of our laboratory have showed that the English grain aphid of the whole wheat growth period can be controlled by seed dressing neonicotinoid imidacloprid(Dang et al., 2011). This research technique was popularized and applied in the wheat field of north China. Because of potential resistance, the control efficacy of imidacloprid on pests is decreasing gradually (Srigiriraju et al., 2010; Ahmad and Akhtar, 2013; Basit et al., 2013; Scott et al., 2015). Therefore, the objective of the present study was to assess the control efficacy of neonicotinoids seed treatment against S. avenae and the effects on growth of wheat, and to seek other neonicotinoids options for controlling S. avenae, if the efficacy of imidacloprid is compromised by resistance in the future.
Section snippets
Insect strains
English grain aphid, S. avenae populations were collected from cultivated wheat areas of Hebei Plant Protection Institute, Baoding, China. Insects were reared at 20–22 °C, 70–80% relative humidity, and exposed to a 14:10 (L:D) h photoperiod. Healthy wingless adult aphids were selected for indoor experiments, whereas, naturally occurring English grain aphid population in the wheat fields were used for field experiments.
Insecticides
Six insecticide formulations were used in this study. Imidacloprid (70% ZF;
Bio-activity of six neonicotinoids to English grain aphid with seed dressing method
Results show the toxicity of clothianidin (LC50 = 20.97 a.i. g/100 kg seeds, P = .81) and thiamethoxam (LC50 = 28.84 a.i. g/100 kg seeds, P = .65) to S. avenae are higher than other neonicotinoids. While LC50 values of nitenpyram, imidacloprid and acetamiprid against English grain aphid range between 128 a.i. g/100 kg seeds and 211 a.i. g/100 kg seeds, dinotefuran show the lowest toxicity (LC50 = 565.76 a.i. g/100 kg seeds, P = .86) to English grain aphid (Table 1).
Field trial experiments
Emerging seedlings from each
Discussion
Although some natural biological control has been achieved, the use of insecticides is still considered the primary strategy used to control aphid in wheat fields. Neonicotinoids are among the most effective insecticides to control sucking-piercing insect pests (Elbert et al., 2008). Following imidacloprid, thiamethoxam and clothianidin are new-generation neonicotinoid, structural modifications resulted in a strong increase of activity against chewing insects and sucking pests (Maienfisch et
Acknowledgements
This research was supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (2017YFD0201707, 2017YFD0201603 and 2016YFD0300705). We are grateful to Dr. Tamra Lincoln for helpful comments on this manuscript. There is no conflict of interest among the authors.
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These authors contributed equally to this work.