| Evaluation of Amblyseius swirskii (Acari: Phytoseiidae) as a biological control agent of Iranian false spider mite, Cenopalpus irani (Acari: Tenuipalpidae) |
| Paper ID : 1106-3IICE (R1) |
| Authors: |
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Fereshteh Bazgir *1, Jahanshir Shakarami2, Shahriar Jafari2 1Department of Plant Protection, Faculty of Agriculture, Lorestan University, Khorramabad, Iran 2Department of Plant Protection, Faculty of Agriculture, Lorestan University, Khoramabad, Iran |
| Abstract: |
| The phytophagous mite Cenopalpus irani Dosse is an important pest of apple trees that is widely distributed in apple orchards of Iran's western regions. Prey stage preference, functional response, and mutual interference of Amblyseius swirskii Athias-Henriot was evaluated on the pest at 25±1°C, 16:8 h L: D, and 60±10% RH on apple leaves. In the prey stage preference tests, each 24 h starved female predator was provided with 80 prey i.e. equal number (20) of newly emerged individual eggs, larvae, protonymphs, and deutonymphs of C. irani. To determine the functional response of the predator on of C. irani, each 24 h starved female predator was exposed to seven densities (2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64 and 128 newly-emerged individuals) of protonymph. The predator consumed mostly protonymphs (14.33), followed by larvae (12.28) compared with significantly lower consumption of eggs (7.61) and deutonymphs (4.06). The functional response was type II on protonymphs of C. irani. The attack rate and handling time on protonymphs were 0.1186 ± 0.0143 h−1 and 0.6421 ± 0.0215 h, respectively. Moreover, the value of maximum attack rate (T/Th) was estimated to be 37.38 eggs per 24 h. The negative value of the interference coefficient in the mutual interference (-0.287) analysis showed an inverse relationship between the predator density and per capita searching efficiency. The results revealed that A. swirskii could be utilized as an effective predator in the integrated management of C. irani. |
| Keywords: |
| apple, consumption rate, functional response, mutual interference, Phytoseiid mite |
| Status : Paper Accepted (Poster Presentation) |
