8. Comparison of pheromone lures used in mass trapping to control the tomato leafminer Tuta absoluta (Meyrick, 1917) in industrial tomato crops in Plovdiv (Bulgaria)

Author: Melika Mohamedova, Eleonora Deleva, Atanaska Stoeva, Vili Harizanova

DOI: n/a

Abstract

Trials were conducted in the summer growing season of 2012-2014 in tomato fields in the region of Plovdiv (Bulgaria). The sex pheromone, produced by the females of T. absoluta – a mixture of (3E,8Z, 11Z)- 3,8,1 l-tetradecatrienyl acetate and (3E,8Z)-3,8-tetradecadienyl acetate in ratio 90:10 was used in several comercially available pheromone lures. A comparison was made between three lures of Russel IPM (Tuta absoluta – 500 loaded with 0,5 mg synthetic sex pheromone, Tuta absoluta-Optima – with 0,8 mg and TUA- 100N – with 3 mg), Pherodis Tuta absoluta – with 0,8 mg (Koppert) and Tuta absoluta pheromone (BioBest) – with 0,5 mg. The lures were mounted on delta traps, spaced at relatively equal distance between each other at 60 cm height in open-field tomato crops. The trap density was 1 per 0.05-0.1 ha. No correlation was found between the number of trapped moths and the damage on leaves and fruits. Even with catches of more than 400 moths per week/trap the level of damage on leaves and fruits did not reach 8%. All the tested lure formulations adequately represented the dynamics of the population density of the males but exhibited different attractiveness to the moths. Overall for the years of the trials, the most attractive was the formulation of Tuta absoluta-Optima, followed by Pherodis Tuta absoluta, but during the cooler summer of 2014, the lures of Pherodis Tuta absoluta (Koppert) and Tuta absoluta pheromone (BioBest) were more attractive.