Seedling protection and barrier crops in chili pepper to reduce whitefly denseness and prevalence of pepper yellow leaf curl virus

Abstract

Yellow leaf curl disease caused by pepper yellow leaf curl virus (PepYLCV) and transmitted by the whitefly (Bemisia tabaci), becomes the main problem in major horticultural crops, including chili pepper. The control of the insect vector is crucial to overwhelm the diseases. The experiment was designed to verify the efficacy of integrated vector and virus control focused on barrier crops and healthy seedling techniques on chili pepper to reduce whitefly crowdedness, the prevalence of the virus, and crop yield. This experiment used a randomized block design. The treatments were two kinds of seedlings, with and without seedling cover, combined with four kinds of borders i.e., maize, Sunn–hemp, screen (chiffon), and control (non-border). The result indicated that the use of protected seedlings was able to defend against the attack of B. tabaci and delay virus infection for about 2 weeks. The use of protected seedlings together with barrier crops (maize and sunn-hemp) reduced the number of pests, and PepYLCV damage up to 49.94 – 50.80%, and gave the highest yields. The positive correlation (r) between the population of B. tabaci and disease incidence was 0.925, whereas the correlation between disease incidence and yield crop was negative (r = -0.8886). These results will provide an advance of more valuable and practical methods for safeguarding chili pepper production.