Isolation, identification and potential uses of sex pheromones for three pests of cotton in Australia

Abstract

The Australian cotton industry is heavily dependent on chemical insecticides for pest control. As a result, a number of environmental issues involving off-farm movement of these pesticides have been raised for the industry. One of the key issues in meeting the challenges of growing cotton in tomorrow's world involves pest management in a more environmentally friendly way. This involves reduction of pesticide use and adoption of integrated pest management (IPM) approaches. Introduction of transgenic cotton in recent years and application of insecticides targeting individual species has enabled a drastic reduction in pesticide use. This allows the numbers of important beneficial insects to build up, aiding in pest control. On the other hand, species like the green mirid (Creontiades dilutus), cotton tipworm (Crocidosema plebejana) and rough bollworm (Earias huegeliana), which were not major problems under intensive use of insecticides are forecast to be more significant pests, which will require a re-evaluation of IPM in cotton. One potential component of IPM involves the use of insect sex pheromones in mating disruption, monitoring, attract-and-kill and mass trapping. Pheromones could be used to predict oviposition on a field by field basis and also give useful indications of the overall abundance of the pests mentioned above. Identified pheromones therefore could be used in area-wide pest management schemes. Pheromones can also be used in attract-and-kill strategies or for mating disruption. Although the Australian cotton industry has not previously made significant use of these techniques, there are ecological reasons for believing that they may be more applicable to some emerging pests than to the key pests of cotton under previous pest management regimes, Helicoverpa spp. This project was carried out to identify the sex pheromones of three pests of cotton in Australia - the rough bollworm, cotton tipworm and green mirids, to test attractive blends and to investigate potential uses of their sex pheromones as part of the general IPM system of the Australian cotton industry.