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Horticulturae
Special Issues
Pest Diagnosis and Control Strategies for Fruit and Vegetable Plants
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Pest Diagnosis and Control Strategies for Fruit and Vegetable Plants

A special issue of Horticulturae (ISSN 2311-7524). This special issue belongs to the section "Insect Pest Management".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 5 September 2024 | Viewed by 873

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Maja Čačija

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department for Agricultural Zoology, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Zagreb, Svetosimunska 25, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia
Interests: entomology; integrated pest management; biological pest control; soil fauna; molecular methods in entomology
Dr. Ivan Juran

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department for Agricultural Zoology, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Zagreb, Svetosimunska 25, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia
Interests: entomology; pesticide application; oilseed rape pests; vegetable pests; decision support systems; biological control
Dr. Carmelo Peter Bonsignore

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Laboratorio di Entomologia ed Ecologia Applicata, Dipartimento PAU, Università Mediterranea di Reggio Calabria, 89124 Reggio Calabria, Italy
Interests: insect ecology; pest management; forest entomology; biological control; tritrophic interactions
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Fruit and vegetable production is constantly threatened by insect pests, diseases and weeds, as well as new invasive species of harmful organisms. Any of these threats can restrict market access and food supply chains, and have an impact on natural and agro ecosystems. The basis for protecting crops from pests today is Integrated Pest Management (IPM), which involves the proper and timely pest diagnosis and pest-adapted control. Accurate and rapid pest detection and identification is the first step towards the use of effective control strategies, which can help growers avoid costly mistakes that lead to economic losses. Nowadays, various diagnostic tools ("decision support systems") are being developed and used that allow the fast and efficient identification of harmful organisms so that an accurate and timely choice of a specific pest control strategy can be implemented.

The purpose of this Special Issue “Pest Diagnosis and Control Strategies for Fruit and Vegetable Plants” is to present innovative studies, approaches, tools and techniques that can be successfully used in pest diagnosis or as efficient control measures in fruit and vegetable production. These also include innovative articles on molecular and geometric morphometrics diagnostic tools, the implementation of artificial intelligence in pest detection, and any control strategy that can suppress the pest in an environmentally friendly and cost-efficient manner.

Dr. Maja Čačija
Dr. Ivan Juran
Dr. Carmelo Bonsignore
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Horticulturae is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2200 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • integrated pest management
  • diagnostic tools (decision support systems)
  • pest monitoring and detection
  • control measures

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

15 pages, 3976 KiB  
Article
Complex Habitats Boost Predator Co-Occurrence, Enhancing Pest Control in Sweet Pepper Greenhouses
by Carmelo Peter Bonsignore and Joan van Baaren
Horticulturae 2024, 10(6), 614; https://doi.org/10.3390/horticulturae10060614 - 9 Jun 2024
Viewed by 573
Abstract
Sweet pepper is a crop that benefits from phytosanitary treatments with low environmental impact, especially the successful control of pests through the introduction of biological control agents in greenhouses. However, predators that naturally occur in these surroundings often enter greenhouses. The precise roles [...] Read more.
Sweet pepper is a crop that benefits from phytosanitary treatments with low environmental impact, especially the successful control of pests through the introduction of biological control agents in greenhouses. However, predators that naturally occur in these surroundings often enter greenhouses. The precise roles of these natural predators and their interactions with the introduced predatory insects and mites are often unknown. This study investigated the relationships between Nesidiocoris tenuis, which is naturally present, and Amblyseius swirskii and Orius laevigatus, which are two species of generalist predators released for the control of multiple pests. This study was conducted for two years on 13 commercial sweet pepper crops in various types of greenhouses (tunnels and traditional greenhouses) in Sicily. The environmental complexity value (ECV) for each site was estimated based on 18 points detected around the site according to the different habitats that occurred at each coordinate. The results showed that the occurrence of N. tenuis in greenhouses, independently of their typology (tunnel or traditional greenhouse), was mainly promoted by the greater diversification of habitats immediately surrounding the pepper crops (in a circular area with a diameter of 500 mt), with an increase in its density during the crop season. Moreover, N. tenuis–O. laevigatus’s co-occurrence in flowers suggested that they were not impacted by each other’s presence and that their co-occurrence had a significant effect on pest reduction, although their co-occurrence was density-dependent. As an intraguild predator, N. tenuis competed with O. laevigatus for Frankliniella occidentalis when many predators were present. In addition, N. tenuis also competed with A. swirskii when they both occurred in flowers at a higher density. This study highlights the importance of pepper plant flowers in promoting a higher occurrence of juvenile forms of N. tenuis within flowers. Amblyseius swirskii colonized the plants in 3 weeks, distributing itself almost uniformly over the leaves with a clear control action against not only Bemisia tabaci but also F. occidentalis when present on the flowers. Thus, this concurrent analysis of several commercial pepper sites within the same production area suggests that, even with similar pest control plans, the diverse variability in the presence of natural enemies must be considered when selecting control strategies for pepper crop pests and that N. tenuis, favored by complex surrounding habitats, contributes actively to pest reduction. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Pest Diagnosis and Control Strategies for Fruit and Vegetable Plants)
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