The efficacy of European fruit lecanium, Parthenolecanium corni (Bouché, 1844) control using natural products

Abstract

European fruit lecanium, Parthenolecanium corni (Bouché, 1844) is among the leading worldwide pests of fruits such as plums, currants, jostaberry, grapevine and many others. This study is focused on testing the effectiveness of natural insecticide treatments compared with conventional insecticides on overwintering nymphs of the European fruit lecanium. In February of 2017, two experiments were conducted under laboratory conditions. The tested products were Boundary SW® (plant extract), Konflic® (plant extract), Ekol® (canola oil) and a tank-mix of Ekol® + Reldan 22® (canola oil and chlorpyrifos-methyl) as a chemical standard. The most effective product tested was the chemical standard tank-mix of Ekol® and Reldan 22®, which was 100% effective in all experiments. High efficiency was also achieved with Ekol® (canola oil) in high concentrations. We can summarize, that using canola oil in high concentration has almost the same effect as the chemical standard. Using canola oil against European fruit lecanium meets the principles of Integrated Pest Management (IPM) and also the need to design cropping systems that are less dependent on synthetic pesticides.

Keywords

• pest
• orchards
• overwintering nymphs
• natural insecticides