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Identification and Field Evaluation of Pear Fruit Volatiles Attractive to the Oriental Fruit Moth, Cydia molesta

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Abstract

Plant volatiles play a key role in host plant location of phytophagous insects. Cydia molesta is an important pest of pear fruit late in the growing season. We identified and quantified volatiles from immature and mature fruits of six pear varieties by using gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC-MS). Attractiveness of synthetic blends to adults based on gas chromatography-electroantennogram detection (GC-EAD) activity was investigated in both field and laboratory. Consistent electroantennographic activity was obtained for 12 compounds from headspace collections of the mature fruits of the six pear varieties. Qualitative and quantitative differences were found among six odor profiles. Among the six mixtures, the mixture of 1-hexanol, nonanal, ethyl butanoate, butyl acetate, ethyl hexanoate, hexyl acetate, hexyl butanoate, and farnesene (different isomers) with a 1:1:100:70:7:5:1:4 ratio from the variety Jimi and the mixture of nonanal, ethyl butanoate, 3-methylbutyl acetate, ethyl hexanoate, hexyl acetate, and farnesene with a 1:100:1:32:1:2 ratio from the variety Huangjin were highly attractive to both sexes in the field. However, male captures were much higher than those of females. Further wind tunnel tests proved that both sexes exhibited upwind flight to the lures, but only males landed on the source. Our finding indicates that mixtures mimicking Jimi and Huangjin volatiles attract both females and males of C. molesta, and these host volatiles may be involved in mate finding behavior.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Rui Wang and Xiao-Wei Qin in our laboratory for technical assistance in GC-EAD and GC-MS, and Jun Liu from the Institute of Forestry and Pomology, Beijing Academy of Agriculture and Forestry Sciences for supplying facilities for field trials. We also thank Paolo Pelosi, University of Pisa, and Joop van Loon, Wageningen University, for help in improving the paper, and three anonymous reviewers for critical comments and suggestions. This work was supported by Public Welfare Project from Ministry of Agriculture of China (grant no. 200803006) and projects of Postdoctoral Science Foundation (grant no. 201104140) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. 30925026, 30621003).

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  1. State Key Laboratory of Integrated Management of Pest Insects and Rodents, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, People’s Republic of China

    Peng-Fei Lu, Ling-Qiao Huang & Chen-Zhu Wang

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  1. Peng-Fei Lu
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  2. Ling-Qiao Huang
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Correspondence to Chen-Zhu Wang.

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Lu, PF., Huang, LQ. & Wang, CZ. Identification and Field Evaluation of Pear Fruit Volatiles Attractive to the Oriental Fruit Moth, Cydia molesta . J Chem Ecol 38, 1003–1016 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10886-012-0152-4

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