Abstract
Avocado (Persea americana Mill.) production contributes to the economic growth of East Africa. However, poor fruit quality caused by infestations of tephritid fruit flies (Tephritidae) and the false codling moth, Thaumatotibia leucotreta (Meyrick), hampers access to lucrative export markets. Remote sensing and spatial analysis are increasingly applied to crop pest studies to develop sustainable and cost-effective control strategies. In this study, we assessed pest abundance in Muranga, Kenya, across three vegetation productivity classes, viz., low, medium and high, which were estimated using the normalised difference vegetation index at a landscape scale. Population densities of the oriental fruit fly, Bactrocera dorsalis (Hendel) and T. leucotreta in avocado farms were estimated through specific baited traps and fruit rearing. The population density of T. leucotreta varied across the vegetation productivity classes throughout the study period, although not significantly. Meanwhile, B. dorsalis showed a clear trend of decrease over time and was significantly lower in high vegetation productivity class compared to low and medium classes. Ceratitis cosyra (Walker) was the most abundant pest reared from fruit with few associated parasitoids, Pachycrepoideus vindemmiae (Rondani) and Toxeumorpha nigricola (Ferriere).
Highlights
IntroductionPests benefit from spatial dominance of host plants and low activity of natural enemies, leading to population build-up and more damages to crops
Agricultural landscapes contain a range of arthropod pests which influence crop productivity [1,2,3].Pests benefit from spatial dominance of host plants and low activity of natural enemies, leading to population build-up and more damages to crops
The normalised difference vegetation index (NDVI) is a common remote sensed variable which derives from the combination of surface reflectance at near infrared and red wavelengths to indicate a particular property of vegetation [7]
Summary
Pests benefit from spatial dominance of host plants and low activity of natural enemies, leading to population build-up and more damages to crops. The distribution of these resources varies across landscapes and time [4], and influence pest population dynamics [5,6]. NDVI as a measure of vegetation productivity, interacts with farm or landscape abiotic factors like rainfall, temperature and altitude. In warm and tropical regions which are characterised by distinct dry and rainy seasons, there might be a weak relationship between NDVI and rainfall or temperature [9,10,11,12]
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