Efficacy Comparison of Afidopyropen with Commonly Used Insecticides Against the green peach aphid (Myzus persicae Sulzer) (Hemiptera: Aphididae) Under Field Condition

Document Type : Research Article

Authors

Hadi Mosallanejad ¹

Zarir Saeidi ²

Ali Joyandeh ³

¹ Iranian Research Institute of Plant Protection, Agricultural Research, Education and Extension Organization (AREEO), Tehran, Iran

² Charmahal & Bakhtiyari Agricultural and Natural Resources Research Center, Agricultural Research, Education and Extension Organization (AREEO), Shahrekord, Iran

³ Khorasan Razavi Agricultural and Natural Resources Research Center, Agricultural Research, Education and Extension Organization (AREEO), Mashhad, Iran

10.22067/jpp.2026.93080.1227

Abstract

Introduction
The green peach aphid, Myzus persicae Sulzer, a cosmopolitan aphid species, is one of the most important pests in Iran and worldwide, causing considerable damages through direct plant sap feeding and transmitting many plant viruses. It is a highly polyphagous, feeding on more than 50 plant families, causing losses to agro-industrial crops (including potato, sugar beet and tobacco), horticultural crops (including plants of Brassicaceae, Solanaceae and Cucurbitaceae families) and stone fruits (peach, apricot, and cherry, among others). A number of factors, such as its distribution, host range, mechanisms of plant damage, life cycle, capacity to disperse and ability to evolve resistance to insecticides, have enhanced the status of this species as a pest. For example, the life cycle is often anholocyclic meaning that it continues the parthenogenesis throughout the year, allowing populations to increase rapidly under favorable conditions and quickly reach damaging numbers. Currently, insecticide application is the primary and most effective option for controlling M. persicae. Indeed, since its damage is of great economic importance in Iran, several insecticide applications are performed against this pest during the cropping season. Biological characteristics, including short generation time and high reproductive capacity, has made this pest as one of the potential pests to develop resistance to insecticides. As a consequence, resistance to many insecticides has reported throughout the world. Globally, insect has shown high to extremely high levels of resistance to a wide range of conventional insecticides. The best Strategy for postpone the resistance evolution is to rotate Insecticides with different modes of action. Indeed, alternation of new mode of action groups have the potential to reduce the intensity of selection for new resistance mechanisms. In order to register new insecticides and diversify the insecticides basket, the present study was conducted to evaluate the field efficacy of Afidopyropen (Ventigra®) (DC 10%) in comparison with malathion (EC 57%) and pirimicarb (WP 50%). Afidopyropen (IRAC 9D) is a novel pyropene insecticide, derived from the fungus Aspergillus fumigatus, that inhibits the insect vanilloid-type transient receptor potential (TRPV) channels. It provides systemic protection in plants due to its high translaminar activity. Afidopyropen interacts with chordotonal stretch receptor neurons in various sap-feeding Hemiptera, which serve as mechanosensory functions by detecting articulatory movements, and causes insect death via starvation and desiccation. Afidopyropen also displays little risk to the environment and to humans. Afidopyropen has been registered for use on a broad range of crops, such as cotton, soybeans, wheat, citrus, pome fruit, stone fruit, tree nuts, leafy and fruiting vegetables, brassica, cucurbits, tuberous and corm vegetables as well as ornamental plants in many countries, such as USA, India, China and Australia.
 
Materials and Methods
The field trial was conducted in a randomized complete block design with five treatments and three replications in peach orchards of three provinces of Iran, Khorasan Razavi, Charmahal & Bakhtiyari and Qazvin, in 2022. To do this, at 3, 7 and 14 days after treatment, the aphid counts per branch were recorded on five shoots per tree, and efficay was calculated using the Henderson and Tilton's formula. The treatments consisted of Afidopyropen (0.1 ml L^-1), Afidopyropen (0.075 ml L^-1), malathion (2 ml L^-1), pirimicarb (0.5 ml L^-1) and control. Afidopyropen (DC 10%) was obtained from the representative of BASF Co., Ltd., Tehran, Iran. Other insecticides were purchased from Golsam Gorgan Chemical Co.
 
Results and Discussion
The combined analysis of variance confirmed that interaction of treatment × place was not significant, meaning that the experimental treatments had the same responses at different locations. Therefore, the data were statistically analyzed based on this, without considering the locations. The results showed that in all days of post treatment, Afidopyropen (0.1 ml L^-1) had the highest efficacy (93-92%), whereas malathion showed the lowest (79-86 %). The reduced dose of Afidopyropen (0.075 ml L^-1), also exhibited good efficacy (%87) at all days of post treatments and there was no significant statistical difference with Afidopyropen with 0.1 ml/L field rate. Additionally, pirimicarb did not show significant statistical difference with malathion at all days of post treatments.
 
Conclusion
In conclusion, our results showed that Afidopyropen exhibited acceptable efficacy against Myzus persicae, required for registration in Iran. However, since the both Afidopyropen concentrations (0.075 and 0.1 ml L^-1) had the same efficiency and considering the low-input of pesticides to the environment and as the economic view, it is recommended to use the application rate of 0.075 ml L^-1 against this pest.   

Keywords

Chemical control

Evaluation

Field trial

New compound

Subjects

• pests

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Authors retain the copyright. This is an open access article distributed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0)

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