Abstract
Identifying the particular guilds of herbivore arthropods that affect the production of crops is key to developing sustainable pest-management strategies; however, there is incomplete information about the identity of herbivore arthropods that could potentially damage the production of both highland and lowland quinoa landraces grown in Chile. By both reviewing the literature and conducting field collections across a large latitudinal gradient, we generated an updated list of 43 herbivore arthropods associated with quinoa production in Chile. In general, most species are polyphagous feeders, and only seven are specialists. The number and identity of species varied in relation with the latitude, such that four distinctive assemblages of herbivores were identified, each containing 32, 27, 34, and 22 species between latitudes 18–26, 26–32, 32–40, and 40–44° S, respectively. The most northern production area (18–26° S) is affected by nine unique species, including the major quinoa pest Eurysacca quinoae Povolný (Lepidoptera: Gelechiidae). Similarly, the central area (32–40° S) contains four unique species, including Eurysacca media Povolný (Lepidoptera: Gelechiidae) and Orthotylus flavosparsus (Sahlberg) (Hemiptera: Miridae). The particular species assemblages described here will help further development of local pest-management practices.
Highlights
Quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa Willd.) is an annual plant mainly grown to obtain grains for human consumption
Bibliographical evidence, together with field collections conducted in this study, allowed us to construct an updated list of arthropod herbivores that feed on quinoa plants in Chile, resulting in a total of 43 arthropod taxa
This is the first study to compile a list of arthropods that feed on quinoa in C
Summary
Quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa Willd.) is an annual plant mainly grown to obtain grains for human consumption. Quinoa is cultivated over a wide variety of environments in South America, extending from the high altitudes (>3500 m above sea level (m.a.s.l.)) of the Andean Altiplano areas of Bolivia, Chile, and Perú, to the lowland/coastal areas of Chile and Perú [4,5]. Two distinctive quinoa ecotypes are cultivated in Chile, the salares and the coastal ecotypes [4]. Plants belonging to the salares ecotype grow in the northern region of Chile (18–29◦ S), which is separated from the central and southern regions (33–43◦ S) by the Atacama Desert and is agroecologically more similar to the Altiplanos of Perú and Bolivia. In the central and southern production regions, the coastal ecotype of quinoa is produced along with many other agricultural vegetables, crops, and fruit trees. Regarding the distribution of quinoa cultivation in Chile, the northern zone (17–26◦ S) accounted for 31%, the central zone (29–36◦ S) accounted for 64%, and the southernmost zone (37–44◦ S) accounted for 5%
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