The orange wheat blossom midge promotes fusarium head blight disease, posing a risk to wheat production in northern China

Abstract

Fusarium head blight (FHB) and the orange wheat blossom midge (OWBM) are chronic wheat diseases and pest insects, respectively, that share the wheat ear as a host from anthesis to milk development in northern China. To elucidate the interactions between the OWBM and FHB on the ears of wheat, we designed a series of experiments investigating FHB disease severity and OWBM performance in wheat exposed to FHB and OWBM individually or in combination. Our results indicated that wheat ears infected with a combination of OWBM and FHB had greatly increased disease incidence, disease severity, FHB index, FDK (Fusarium damaged kernels) and ISK index (incidence, severity, and, kernel quality index) relative to plants treated only with FHB. Furthermore, the mean percentage of OWBM infected plants and mean number of OWBM larvae per plant were slightly higher than those of plants treated with only OWBM. Wheat ears infected with a combination of OWBM and FHB showed significantly reduced yield relative to those infected by OWBM or FHB alone. These results improve our understanding of the risk posed by OWBM involvement in FHB disease epidemiology and indicate that more-comprehensive risk management may be crucial to advancing integrated pest management of wheat.