Efficiency of botanical pesticides against some pests infesting hydroponic cucumber, cultivated under greenhouse conditions

Muhammad Shoaib Saleem,Saleem Shahzad,Saboohi Raza,Tuba Sharf Batool,Muhammad Faheem Akbar

doi:10.1186/s41938-019-0138-4

Muhammad Shoaib Saleem, Saleem Shahzad + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1186/s41938-019-0138-4

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Abstract

Greenhouse cultivation of vegetables, especially cucumber in hydroponic/soilless culture, has been developed in different parts of the world. There is an expanding interest in hydroponics because they can produce fresh food closer to urban areas. The objective of this study was to evaluate the efficiency of the biopesticides: matrine (extract from Sophora flavescens), spintoram (derived from soil bacterium Saccharopolyspora spinosa), azadirachtin (neem extract), and Annona squamosa (custard apple extract) against the cotton aphid (Aphis gossypii Glov.) and the two-spotted spider mite, (Tetranychus urticae Koch.). A drip-irrigation hydroponics system (DIHS) was designed and used for this study. Fourteen-day-old seedlings of cucumber plants were shifted in DIHS, and nutrient requirements were maintained during the period of experiment. Randomized complete block design (RCBD) was used for this experiment with 3 replicates and with 5 treatments. Data were collected 24 h pre-treatment and 1, 3, 7, and 14 days post-treatment. Results revealed that the custard apple extract showed the highest efficiency (80 and 76%) reduction against the aphid and the mite, respectively, followed by matrine (legend) and neem extract (73%), and spintoram (radiant) (69%) in case of the aphid, while it was followed by matrine (legend) (75%), spintoram (radiant), (66%), and neem extract (56%) in the case of the mite.

Highlights

Cucumber (Cucumis sativus L.) is one of the global horticultural crops (Eifediyi and Remison 2010)
The biopesticides applied at the recommended dose significantly reduced the mean number of live insect and showed high efficacy in controlling Tetranychus urticae and Aphis gossypii
Efficiency of the biopesticides against Aphis gossypii One day post-treatment (Table 1), spintoram showed a maximum reduction in A. gossypii population by (59%), with the efficacy of 46%, followed by azadirachtin, custard apple, and matrine that reduced the population (49, 38, and 18.3%) with the efficacy of 46, 31, and 39%, respectively

Summary

Introduction

Cucumber (Cucumis sativus L.) is one of the global horticultural crops (Eifediyi and Remison 2010). Plant extracts and botanical pesticides have showed great importance in agricultural fields due to their cheap and low expenses, with no residual effects, environmentally friendly, and highly toxic against major pests such as thrips, aphids, jassids, whitefly, and mites (Stumpf and Nauen 2001). Laboratory and field experiments proved that custard apple extract effectively managed different field crop pests and stored grain pests (Misra 2000). It has high toxicity against various insect pests and used for the management of leafhoppers, mites, aphids, and caterpillars and bacterial and fungal diseases (Marcic et Saleem et al Egyptian Journal of Biological Pest Control (2019) 29:37 al. It is used for the management of stored commodities pests (Liu et al 2007)

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