Mating disruption of the tomato leaf miner Tuta absoluta (Lepidoptera: Gelechiidae)in greenhouse cultivation by Isonet® T

Abstract: In the last few years the tomato leaf miner (Tuta absoluta) has become a major pest offield and greenhouse tomato crops, causing up to 80-100% yield losses. Plant protection heavilyrelies on chemical insecticides, so alternative means of containment are needed in order to reducechemical residues in the product and to slow the selection of insecticide resistant biotypes. On asummer cycle tomato crop under plastic greenhouse, insecticide based protection schedule wascompared with a mating disruption scheme based on the Isonet® T pheromone product and halfof the insecticide applications made with the standard farm schedule. The strategy includingmating disruption performed much better than the standard farm one, reducing to nearly zero thecaptures of flying adults and fruit attacks and to about 15% the percentage of leaflets mined,compared to 8% of fruits and 47% of leaflets attacked for the insecticide alone control.