Host plant influence on susceptibility of Bemisia tabaci (Hemiptera: Aleyrodidae) to insecticides

A resistance monitoring program conducted for the polyphagous whitefly, Bemisia tabaci (Gennadius), in Imperial Valley, CA, USA generated a large set of LC50s for adults collected from broccoli, cantaloupe and cotton crops over a four-year period. A vial bioassay and, subsequently, a yellow-sticky card bioassay produced similar temporal profiles of relative susceptibilities to the pyrethroid insecticide bifenthrin. Both bioassays revealed that whiteflies collected from broccoli were significantly less susceptible to bifenthrin compared to the other two crops. A similar finding was observed for endosulfan and the mixture of bifenthrin+endosulfan in the yellow-sticky card bioassay. The possibility that seasonal differences contributed to the observed differences in susceptibility provided the impetus to conduct a reciprocal transfer experiment using broccoli (or kale) and cantaloupe grown simultaneously in the field and greenhouse. Whitefly adults collected from an organic farm over three consecutive weeks had significantly higher LC50s on kale than those collected the same day on cantaloupe. After culturing in the greenhouse on broccoli or cantaloupe and testing again, LC50s remained significantly higher on broccoli after one week and again at the F1 generation. In contrast, whiteflies originating on kale in the field and transferred to cantaloupes in the greenhouse had significantly reduced LC50s at the F1 generation. When tested against the bifenthrin+endosulfan mixture, significantly higher LC50s were generated for whiteflies reared on broccoli in the greenhouse at one week and the F1 compared to the field source from cantaloupes. The consistently higher LC50s for whiteflies on broccoli and other Brassica spp. crops, compared to cantaloupes or cotton, point to statistically significant host-plant influences that are expressed in both field-collected and greenhouse-reared populations of whiteflies.