Plant Protection (Scientific Journal of Agriculture)

Plant Protection (Scientific Journal of Agriculture)

Greenhouse evaluation of flonicamid efficacy against green peach aphid (Myzus persicae) and western flower thrips (Frankliniella occidentalis) at different population densities

Document Type : Short communication-ٍEnglish

Authors
M. Rezaei 1
F. Graily Moradi 2
1 Assistant Professor, Department of Plant Protection and Production, Institute of Agriculture, Iranian Research Organization for Science and Technology (IROST), Tehran, Iran
2 Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of Plant Protection, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran
10.22055/ppr.2025.49455.1807
Abstract
The green peach aphid (Myzus persicae Sulzer) and the western flower thrips (Franklinella occidentalis Pergande) are major pests in pepper greenhouses. One of the strategies for their effective control is the use of insecticides with novel modes of action and a short pre-harvest interval. In this study, we evaluated the efficacy of the insecticide flonicamid (WG 50%) on different population densities of M. persicae and F. occidentalis in bell pepper greenhouses in Isfahan Province (Iran). The experiments were conducted as a randomized complete block design at the highest registered application rate of the insecticide (125 mg ai l-1). The results showed that flonicamid effectively controlled M. persicae populations, achieving greater than 80% mortality at various population densities up to 14 days after treatment. Also, no significant difference was observed between low and high population densities of this pest. In contrast, flonicamid showed good efficacy only against low densities of F. occidentalis (79% mortality at 14 days post-treatment). For high thrips densities, the efficacy declined to 63, 59, and 47% on days 3, 7, and 14 post-treatment, respectively, showing significant differences compared to low population densities at all time intervals. These findings suggest that flonicamid is a highly effective and safe insecticide for managing M. persicae at any population density and F. occidentalis at low densities in pepper greenhouses.
Keywords
Bell pepper
greenhouse pests
insecticide
mortality
spraying
Subjects
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 © 2025 by the authors. Licensee SCU, Ahvaz, Iran. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0 license) (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.
Plant Protection (Scientific Journal of Agriculture)
Volume 48, Issue 3
Autumn 2025
Pages 71-79