Activities
Improvement of existing mating disruption control systems towards more reliable and economic applications
Development of new applications of semiochemicals for pest control: Attract-and-kill, push-and-pull, push-pull-kill and others
Managing beneficial insects by semiochemicals
Using plant volatiles for monitoring natural enemies of pest insects
Improvement in dispenser materials and methods
Measurement of airborne pheromone concentrations in the field
Field and laboratory tests on behavioural mechanisms
Improvement of efficiency and selectivity of monitoring traps and mass trapping devices found on the market
Chemists and entomologists cooperate in establishing standards for the chemical composition and behavioral activity of lures, and in assuring their availability
Studying the impact of fundamental determinants of climate change on the chemically mediated interactions between pests and cultivated plants
A long-term study concerns agricultural production in the context of chemical ecology as it affects the entire consumer-crop-pest complex
Achievements
Insect control by synthetic pheromones has become a reality over the past decades.The area under mating disruption has increased almost exponentially from the 1990s, and it is reported that the crop area being managed for pests using mating disruption worldwide was 770,000 ha in 2010 (Ioriatti et al., 2011; Witzgall et al., 2010).
The species with the highest land area under mating disruption were the gypsy moth (Lymantria dispar) in North American forests, the codling moth (Cydia pomonella) on apple and pear trees worldwide, and the grapevine moth (Lobesia botrana) in grape in the EU and Chile (Witzgall et al., 2010). The Internet database “Pherobase” (El Sayed 2019) currently lists 149 species, for which mating disruption techniques have been proven, and 133 of these are Lepidoptera (Gross and Gündermann 2016). The use of pheromone traps for detection and monitoring is a well-established part of most pest control programs.
Keywords
sex pheromones, semiochemicals, mating disruption, monitoring, environmentally safe insect management
Aim
Development and promotion of the use of pheromones and allelochemicals (attractants and repellents) for monitoring and detection, and for environmentally safe control of harmful insects. Examples are Mating Disruption, attract-and-kill, push-and-pull strategies.