Growers of field vegetable crops are under increasing pressure to reduce their reliance on synthetic chemical pesticides and increase their use of alternative pest management tools, including biological control agents. In this project, experiments have been conducted to investigate insect pathogenic fungi as control agents of the cabbage aphid on horticultural brassicas. These fungi contribute to the natural regulation of aphid populations, but they can also be mass-produced and applied to crops by growers as “biopesticides.” Field experiments were carried out over two seasons to investigate the association between the population dynamics of cabbage aphids, insect pathogenic fungi, and other natural enemies. This has been backed up by laboratory experiments on one particular fungus, Pandora neoaphidis, which causes natural epizootics in cabbage aphid populations, and which has not been studied against this pest in detail before. Research has focused in particular on developing laboratory methods for characterizing fungal virulence, and on the effect of temperature on fungal infectivity as a key environmental variable affecting Pandora outbreaks. Finally, the susceptibility of cabbage aphid to infection by commercially available fungal biopesticides has been compared against aphid susceptibility to Pandora neoaphidis.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:742269 |
| Date | January 2018 |
| Creators | Harvey, Liam |
| Publisher | University of Warwick |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/101179/ |
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