Abstract
The chive maggot Bradysia cellarum and the fungus gnat B. impatiens are two primary root pests of plants, which can coexist on the same host plants and are the devastating pests on liliaceous crops and edible fungi. Their growth and development are affected by the nutrient contents of their host plants. In this study, we assessed the effects of different host plant nutrients on the nutrient contents of these two Bradysia species. The nutrients of the chive (Allium tuberosum Rottl. ex Spreng.), board bean (Vicia faba L.), lettuce (Lactuca sativa L. var. ramosa Hort.), cabbage (Brassica oleracea L.), wild cabbage (Brassica oleracea var. capitata rubra) and pepper (Capsicum annuum L.) roots were determined, and their effect on nutrient content of the two Bradysia species after feeding on the host plant for three continuous generations were evaluated. The results show that chive and B-bean contained higher levels of protein, free amino acid, soluble sugar and starch than others. As a result, the soluble sugar, fat and protein contents were significantly higher in both Bradysia species reared on chive and B-bean than on cabbage, lettuce, W-cabbage and pepper, suggesting nutritional preference of these insects. Based on our results, we concluded that the two Bradysia species displayed nutrient preference toward chive and B-bean, which provides a reference for understanding their host plant range and for control of the insect species via field crop rotations.
Original language | English (US) |
---|---|
Article number | e0226471 |
Journal | PloS one |
Volume | 15 |
Issue number | 4 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Apr 2020 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This study was supported by the Discipline Construction Fund Project of Gansu Agricultural University (GAU-XKJS-2018-149), and International Commonwealth Scientific Research Special Fund-Research and Demonstration of Crop Root Maggot Control Technology (201303027). We thank Professor Jing-Jiang Zhou of Rothamsted Research, UK for a critical review of this article and helpful suggestions. We would like to thank DBMediting for professional English language editing services!
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 Gou et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.