Breeding for Resistance to Insect Pests of Stored Grain

Abstract

The stored grain pests cause serious damage annually. According to FAO the losses from pest attack stored grain is estimated at 10 %. These losses arise from several factors; beginning in the field where the grain already harvested may contain insect eggs, and go to bad storage conditions, which may favor the development of these pests and other insect infestations. The mechanisms of plant resistance to the pest of stored grains are similar to those used for insect pests resistance of crops and these mechanisms can be classified as pre-harvest and post-harvest. The mechanisms of pre-harvest are those capable of preventing the grain in already infested field and are often related to the architecture of the reproductive structure of the plant. The post-harvest mechanisms are those that will prevent the stored grain to be infested by pests and are related to the storage of metabolites produced by the plant and will influence the hardness and moisture content of grain. The study of reaction resistance to stored grain pests is a major challenge for plant breeding, since the organism under study is the seed and that this finding is in latency stage. In the presence of the insect pest, the grain will not signal biochemicals that will trigger defense mechanisms. So their defense mechanism is summarized only in the stored metabolites, which give greater or lesser resistance by pest attack.