Our recent paper in J Econ Entomol! Baculovirus formulation overcomes phylloplane effect

News

One new paper from Molen! Our recent paper ” A novel tank-mix formulation increases the efficacy of alphabaculoviruses on different phylloplanes” just got accepted into Journal of Economic Entomology., the iconic, second mostly cited entomology journal worlwide! The first author of the study was Dr. Ali Mehrvar, whereas Solmaz Ghanbari, Gökhan Söylemezoglu were coauthors and Dr. Umut being the corresonding author.

The persistence of baculoviruses in the environment has been an important factor in their field success, and the host plant of herbivorous insects is a key determinant in this . Thus, the efficacy of the baculovirus might significantly differ depending on the host plant, indicating phylloplane effect on baculoviruses is host-pathogen dependent. However, there have been several studies on the phylloplane effect on the persistence of S. littoralis NPVs (SpliNPV) and S. exigua NPVs (SeMNPV), even though their insect hosts, the Spodopterans are quite harmful pests worldwide.

In the current study, the biological activity (LC50 and LT50) of two Alphabaculovirus species (SpliNPV and SeMNPV) with and without a tank-mix, novel SC formulation was first evaluated against S. littoralis and S. exigua larvae on an artificial diet in lab conditions. This was followed by the comparison of each virus on eggplants and pepper plants in a greenhouse to assess their timely persistence and biological activation. The study briefly indicated that:

  1. The tank-mix formulation did not make any difference in the biological activity of the viruses on an artificial diet under laboratory conditions.
  2. The original activity remaining (OAR%) of both unformulated and formulated viruses decreased over time under greenhouse conditions
  3. The formulation improved the OAR of both viruses under greenhouse conditions.
  4. The OAR-based persistence of both viruses on eggplants was significantly higher than on pepper plants.

Congratulations to the team, here is the citation info:

Mehrvar, A., Ghanbari, S., Söylemezoğlu, G., Toprak, U. A novel tank-mix formulation increases the efficacy of alphabaculoviruses on different phylloplanes. Journal of Economic Entomology. In press.