Biological control of the chaotic sugarcane borer-parasitoid agroecosystem

Abstract

As a raw material for ethanol, the production of sugarcane in Brazil is a very important and profitable agribusiness sector. In the last decades, with the prohibition of burning cane fields and the expansion of plantations, there has been a significant increase in the population of pests, the most important of which is a sugarcane borer (Diatraea saccharalis). It affects the stalks of plants, causing losses and decreasing the industrial yield in the sugar and alcohol production process. Thus, the purpose of this work is to study an interaction between the sugarcane borer and its larval parasite (Cotesia flavipes). The interaction between these populations is modeled by a host-parasitoid system, for which the study is done considering an influence of seasonal variation on the dynamics of the system. It has been shown that this variation generates chaotic dynamics in the system. In order to keep the pest population below economic damage, a biological control strategy has been proposed, which consists of introducing into the environment the amount of pest parasitoids determined by the State Dependent Riccati Equation (SDRE) method.