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Ecologically controlling insect and mite pests of tea plants with microbial pesticides: a review

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Abstract

Insect and mite pests are damaging stressors that are threatening the cultivation of tea plants, which result in enormous crop loss. Over the years, the effectiveness of synthetic pesticides has allowed for its prominent application as a control strategy. However, the adverse effects of synthetic pesticides in terms of pesticide residue, environmental contamination and insect pest resistance have necessitated the need for alternative strategies. Meanwhile, microbial pesticides have been applied to tackle the damaging activities of the insect and mite pests of tea plants, and their performances were scientifically adjudged appreciable and environmental friendly. Herein, entomopathogenic microbes that were effective against tea geometrid (Ectropis obliqua Prout), tea green leafhopper (Empoasca onukii Matsuda), paraguay tea ampul (Gyropsylla spegazziniana), tea mosquito bug (Helopeltis theivora Waterhouse) and red spider mite (Oligonychus coffea Nietner) have been reviewed. The current findings revealed that microbial pesticides were effective and showed promising performances against these pests. Overall, this review has provided the basic and integrative information on the integrated pest management (IPM) tool(s) that can be utilized towards successful control of the aforementioned insect and mite pests.

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Acknowledgements

This project was supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (No. 2017YFD0200400, No. 2017YFE0121700 and No. 2017YFE0122000), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 31672084), and the State Key Laboratory of Ecological Pest Control for Fujian and Taiwan Crops (No. SKL2018010). We thank the teachers and the students of the Biopesticide Research Center for their help. Thanks are also extended to the referees for their productive comments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Ecological Pest Control for Fujian and Taiwan Crops and Key Laboratory of Biopesticides and Chemical Biology of Ministry of Education, College of Life Sciences and College of Plant Protection and International College, Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University, Fuzhou, 350002, Fujian, People’s Republic of China

    Aisha Lawan Idris, Xiao Fan, Musa Hassan Muhammad, Yachong Guo, Xiong Guan & Tianpei Huang

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  1. Aisha Lawan Idris
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  2. Xiao Fan
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  3. Musa Hassan Muhammad
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  4. Yachong Guo
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TH and XG came up with the idea. ALI, XF, MHM and YG searched for the literatures. ALI wrote the manuscript. TH reviewed the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Tianpei Huang.

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Communicated by Erko Stackebrandt.

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Idris, A.L., Fan, X., Muhammad, M.H. et al. Ecologically controlling insect and mite pests of tea plants with microbial pesticides: a review. Arch Microbiol 202, 1275–1284 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00203-020-01862-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00203-020-01862-7

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