Tuta Absoluta Research Articles

Research toward enhancing integrated management of Tuta absoluta, an ongoing invasive threat in Afro-Eurasia

Research toward enhancing integrated management of Tuta absoluta, an ongoing invasive threat in Afro-Eurasia

Protected agriculture matters: Year-round persistence of Tuta absoluta in China where it should not.

Protected agriculture matters: Year-round persistence of Tuta absoluta in China where it should not.

An ecological model to analyze and control the dynamics of the leafminer pest Tuta absoluta on tomato (Solanum lycopersicum)

An ecological model to analyze and control the dynamics of the leafminer pest Tuta absoluta on tomato (Solanum lycopersicum)

The expression and function of opsin genes related to the phototactic behavior of Tuta absoluta

The expression and function of opsin genes related to the phototactic behavior of Tuta absoluta

Assessment of the suitability of three native Trichogramma species for biological control of Tuta absoluta in China

Assessment of the suitability of three native Trichogramma species for biological control of Tuta absoluta in China

Evaluation of resistance in wild tomato accessions to the whitefly Bemisia tabaci and the invasive tomato leafminer Tuta absoluta

Evaluation of resistance in wild tomato accessions to the whitefly Bemisia tabaci and the invasive tomato leafminer Tuta absoluta

Screening the optimal dose of gamma radiation for Tuta absoluta sterility: paving the way for sterile insect technique programs

Screening the optimal dose of gamma radiation for Tuta absoluta sterility: paving the way for sterile insect technique programs

Lobularia maritima as a nutrient-rich floral food source for two parasitoid wasps of Tuta absoluta

Lobularia maritima as a nutrient-rich floral food source for two parasitoid wasps of Tuta absoluta

Genomic identification and evolutionary analysis of chemosensory receptor gene families in two Phthorimaea pest species: insights into chemical ecology and host adaptation

BackgroundInsects rely on sophisticated sensitive chemosensory systems to sense their complex chemical environment. This sensory process involves a combination of odorant receptors (ORs), gustatory receptors (GRs) and ionotropic receptors (IRs) in the chemosensory system. This study focused on the identification and characterization of these three types of chemosensory receptor genes in two closely related Phthorimaea pest species, Phthorimaea operculella (potato tuber moth) and Phthorimaea absoluta (tomato leaf miner).ResultsBased on manual annotation of the genome, we identified a total of 349 chemoreceptor genes from the genome of P. operculella, including 93 OR, 206 GR and 50 IR genes, while for P. absoluta, we identified 72 OR, 122 GR and 46 IR genes. Through phylogenetic analysis, we observed minimal differences in the number and types of ORs and IRs between the potato tuber moth and tomato leaf miner. In addition, we found that compared with those of tomato leaf miners, the gustatory receptor branch of P. operculella has undergone a large expansion, which may be related to P. absoluta having a narrower host range than P. operculella. Through analysis of differentially expressed genes (DEGs) of male and female antennae, we uncovered 45 DEGs (including 32ORs, 9 GRs, and 4 IRs).ConclusionsOur research provides a foundation for exploring the chemical ecology of these two pests and offers new insights into the dietary differentiation of lepidopteran insects, while simultaneously providing molecular targets for developing environmentally friendly pest control methods based on insect chemoreception.

Biochemical features of tomato under the influence of gibberellin and its impact on life table and physiology of Tuta absoluta (Merick) (Gelechiidae, Lepidoptera) reared on tomato

The Tomato leaf miner Tuta absoluta is an important agricultural pest and exerts a considerable influence on tomato production across the world. In the present research tomato plants were sprayed with a gibberellin solution at a concentration of 50 µM. The gibberellin treatment resulted in a prolonged duration of T. absoluta preadult stage (33.67 days) compared to control group (27.38 days). The fecundity rate in treated females (82.33 eggs/female) was lowered compared to the controls (96.92 eggs/female). The intrinsic rate of increase (r) (0.080 day−1) was also reduced in treatments compared with the control (0.110 day−1). The finite rate of increase (λ) in treatment (1.084 day−1) decreased compared to the controls (1.116 day−1). The antioxidant system enzymes of T. absoluta, including catalase, peroxidase, and superoxide dismutase (SOD) were increased in treated insects. The gibberellin also increased the activity of detoxifying enzymes including Glutathione s-transferase with two substrates (DCNB and CDNB) and cytochrome P450 compared to the control group. While general esterase did not show significant differences in treatment and control. The secondary metabolites in treated plants including total sugar, total phenol content, anthocyanin, flavonoid and tannin showed an increasing trend. The results clearly show the negative impact of gibberellin on life table and physiology of the tomato leaf miner and can be considered favorable in integrated pest management programs of this pest.

Investigating the effects of species niche shifts on the potential distribution of Tuta absoluta (Lepidoptera: Gelechiidae) by using global occurrence data.

Invasive species may occupy quite different environments in their invaded areas to native ones, which may intensively interfere with predicting potential distribution through ecological niche modeling (ENM). Here, we take the tomato leafminerTuta absoluta Meyrick (Lepidoptera: Gelechiidae), a tomato pest, as an example to investigate this topic. We analyzed niche expansion, stability, unfilling, and Schoener's D by principal component analysis (PCA)ordination method to examine its realized niche shifts and to explore how ENM approaches are affected by niche shifts. We used 5 datasets: Asian, African, European, South American, and global occurrence records in this study. Results showed that high niche unfilling for the species' invaded areas in Asia (20%), Africa (12%), and Europe (37%), possibly due to T. absoluta being in the early stages of invasion. High niche expansion was observed in Asia (38%) and Europe (19%), implying that some European and Asian populations had reached new climatic areas. African niche had the most niche stability (94%) and was equivalent to the native one in climate space (PCA ordination method), but the n-dimensional climate space framework showed that they were different. When projecting the native model to Asia and Europe, the native model performed poorly, implying that the niche shifts affected the transferability of the native model. ENM based on global data outperformed than other models, and our results suggested that T. absoluta has a large potential distribution in Asia, Mexico, South Europe, the United States, and Australia. Meanwhile, we recommend updating ENMs based on the species' invasion stage.

Impact of Climate and Plant age on Tomato leaf Miner Population Patterns, Tomato Leaf Miner, Tuta absoluta (Meyrick) (Lepidoptera: Gelechiidae)

Impact of Climate and Plant age on Tomato leaf Miner Population Patterns, Tomato Leaf Miner, Tuta absoluta (Meyrick) (Lepidoptera: Gelechiidae)

Bacterial biota associated with the invasive insect pest Tuta absoluta (Meyrick)

Tuta absoluta (the tomato pinworm) is an invasive insect pest with a highly damaging effect on tomatoes causing between 80 and 100% yield losses if left uncontrolled. Resistance to chemical pesticides have been reported in some T. absoluta populations. Insect microbiome plays an important role in the behavior, physiology, and survivability of their host. In a bid to explore and develop an alternative control method, the associated microbiome of this insect was studied. In this study, we unraveled the bacterial biota of T. absoluta larvae and adults by sequencing and analyzing the 16S rRNA V3-V4 gene regions using Illumina NovaSeq PE250. Out of 2,092,015 amplicon sequence variants (ASVs) recovered from 30 samples (15 larvae and 15 adults), 1,268,810 and 823,205 ASVs were obtained from the larvae and adults, respectively. A total of 433 bacterial genera were shared between the adults and larval samples while 264 and 139 genera were unique to the larvae and adults, respectively. Amplicon metagenomic analyses of the sequences showed the dominance of the phylum Proteobacteria in the adult samples while Firmicutes and Proteobacteria dominated in the larval samples. Linear discriminant analysis effect size (LEfSe) comparison revealed the genera Pseudomonas, Delftia and Ralstonia to be differentially enriched in the adult samples while Enterococcus, Enterobacter, Lactococcus, Klebsiella and Wiessella were differentially abundant in the larvae. The diversity indices showed that the bacterial communities were not different between the insect samples collected from different geographical regions. However, the bacterial communities significantly differed based on the sample type between larvae and adults. A co-occurrence network of significantly correlated taxa revealed a strong interaction between the microbial communities. The functional analysis of the microbiome using FAPROTAX showed that denitrification, arsenite oxidation, methylotrophy and methanotrophy as the active functional groups of the adult and larvae microbiomes. Our results have revealed the core taxonomic, functional, and interacting microbiota of T. absoluta and these indicate that the larvae and adults harbor a similar but transitory set of bacteria. The results provide a novel insight and a basis for exploring microbiome-based biocontrol strategy for this invasive insect pest as well as the ecological significance of some of the identified microbiota is discussed.

Molecular confirmation of the presence of the South American tomato leafminer, Phthorimaea absoluta Meyrick, 1917 (Lepidoptera: Gelechiidae) in Lao PDR

Molecular confirmation of the presence of the tomato leafminer, Phthorimaea (Tuta) absoluta Meyrick, 1917 (Lepidoptera: Gelechiidae), in the Paksong region of the Bolaven Plateau in Champasak province in south-western Lao PDR is reported. The moth, which is native to South America, has invaded many countries in Europe, Africa, and Asia since 2006, and, based on regional records possibly entered Lao PDR between 2014 and 2018. It is a devastating pest of solanaceous crops and threatens tomato production worldwide. Further surveys are required to determine its presence in other regions of Lao PDR and effective management programs must be developed to help farmers minimise losses.

Phenylalanine treatment induces tomato resistance to Tuta absoluta via increased accumulation of benzenoid/phenylpropanoid volatiles serving as defense signals.

Tuta absoluta ("leafminer"), is a major pest of tomato crops worldwide. Controlling this insect is difficult due to its efficient infestation, rapid proliferation, and resilience to changing weather conditions. Furthermore, chemical pesticides have only a short-term effect due to rapid development of T. absoluta strains. Here, we show that a variety of tomato cultivars, treated with external phenylalanine solutions exhibit high resistance to T. absoluta, under both greenhouse and open field conditions, at different locations. A large-scale metabolomic study revealed that tomato leaves absorb and metabolize externally given Phe efficiently, resulting in a change in their volatile profile, and repellence of T. absoluta moths. The change in the volatile profile is due to an increase in three phenylalanine-derived benzenoid phenylpropanoid volatiles (BPVs), benzaldehyde, phenylacetaldehyde, and 2-phenylethanol. This treatment had no effect on terpenes and green leaf volatiles, known to contribute to the fight against insects. Phe-treated plants also increased the resistance of neighboring non-treated plants. RNAseq analysis of the neighboring non-treated plants revealed an exclusive upregulation of genes, with enrichment of genes related to the plant immune response system. Exposure of tomato plants to either benzaldehyde, phenylacetaldehyde, or 2-phenylethanol, resulted in induction of genes related to the plant immune system that were also induced due to neighboring Phe-treated plants. We suggest a novel role of phenylalanine-derived BPVs as mediators of plant-insect interactions, acting as inducers of the plant defense mechanisms.

Determination of tomato leafminer: Tuta absoluta (Meyrick) (Lepidoptera: Gelechiidae) damage on tomato using deep learning instance segmentation method

AbstractPests significantly negatively affect product yield and quality in agricultural production. Agricultural producers may not accurately identify pests and signs of pest damage. Thus, incorrect or excessive insecticides may be used. Excessive use of insecticides not only causes human health and environmental pollution, but also increases input costs. Therefore, early detection and diagnosis of pests is extremely important. In this study, the effectiveness of the instance segmentation method, a deep learning-based method, was investigated for the early detection of the damage caused by the T. absoluta pest in the leaf part of the tomato plant under greenhouse conditions. An original dataset was created by acquiring 800 healthy and damaged images under greenhouse conditions. The acquired images were labelled as bounding box and automatically converted to a mask label with the Segment Anything Model (SAM) model. The created dataset was trained with YOLOv8(n/s/m/l/x)-Seg models. As a result of the training, the box performance of the proposed YOLOv8l-Seg model was measured as 0.924 in the mAP0.5 metric. The YOLOv8l-Seg model mask values are, respectively: mAP0.5, mAP0.5–0.95, Precision, Recall showed the best performance with values of 0.935, 0.806, 0.956 and 0.859. Then, the YOLOv8l-Seg model, trained with different data input sizes, showed the best performance at 640 × 640 size and the lowest performance with a value of 0.699 in the mAP0.5 metric in the 80 × 80 size. The same dataset was trained with YOLOv7, YOLOv5l, YOLACT and Mask R-CNN instance segmentation models and performance comparisons were made with the YOLOv8l-Seg model. As a result, it was determined that the model that best detected T. absoluta damage in tomato plants was the YOLOv8l-Seg model. The Mask R-CNN model showed the lowest performance with a metric of 0.806 mAP0.5. The results obtained from this study revealed that the proposed model and method can be used effectively in detecting the damage caused by the T. absoluta pest.

A Citizen Science Tool Based on an Energy Autonomous Embedded System with Environmental Sensors and Hyperspectral Imaging

Citizen science reinforces the development of emergent tools for the surveillance, monitoring, and early detection of biological invasions, enhancing biosecurity resilience. The contribution of farmers and farm citizens is vital, as volunteers can strengthen the effectiveness and efficiency of environmental observations, improve surveillance efforts, and aid in delimiting areas affected by plant-spread diseases and pests. This study presents a robust, user-friendly, and cost-effective smart module for citizen science that incorporates a cutting-edge developed hyperspectral imaging (HI) module, integrated in a single, energy-independent device and paired with a smartphone. The proposed module can empower farmers, farming communities, and citizens to easily capture and transmit data on crop conditions, plant disease symptoms (biotic and abiotic), and pest attacks. The developed HI-based module is interconnected with a smart embedded system (SES), which allows for the capture of hyperspectral images. Simultaneously, it enables multimodal analysis using the integrated environmental sensors on the module. These data are processed at the edge using lightweight Deep Learning algorithms for the detection and identification of Tuta absoluta (Meyrick), the most important invaded alien and devastating pest of tomato. The innovative Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based module offers open interfaces to passive surveillance platforms, Decision Support Systems (DSSs), and early warning surveillance systems, establishing a seamless environment where innovation and utility converge to enhance crop health and productivity and biodiversity protection.

Life Table Parameters of the Tomato Leaf Miner Tuta absoluta (Lepidoptera: Gelechiidae) on Five Tomato Cultivars in China.

Tomato is the most preferred host plant for Tuta absoluta, a newly emerged devastating invasive pest in China. However, no study has evaluated the damage risk of T. absoluta on processed tomato worldwide. In the current study, the life table parameters of T. absoluta were systematically investigated on five tomato cultivars (one fresh tomato cultivar, four processed tomato cultivars) to determine their susceptibility to T. absoluta infestation. T. absoluta had a better population growth ability on the fresh tomato, "Dafen", showing shorter duration of the preadult stage, higher lifetime fecundity, and a higher intrinsic rate of increase compared to four processed tomato cultivars. Meanwhile, the life table parameters of T. absoluta among different processed tomato cultivars also showed significant differences. Th9 was the most susceptible to T. absoluta attack, while Th1902, Heinz1015, and Dimen2272 were the least suitable ones for its development and reproduction. In summary, these tomato cultivars are the most recommended for commercial tomato production to reduce the damage caused by T. absoluta and improve the integrated pest management strategy.

Presence of Multiple Genetic Mutations Related to Insecticide Resistance in Chinese Field Samples of Two Phthorimaea Pest Species.

Potatoes hold the distinction of being the largest non-cereal food crop globally. The application of insecticides has been the most common technology for pest control. The repeated use of synthetic insecticides of the same chemical class and frequent applications have resulted in the emergence of insecticide resistance. Two closely related pests that feed on potato crops are the potato tuber moth, Phthorimaea operculella, and the tomato leafminer, Phthorimaea absoluta (syn. Tuta absoluta). Previous studies indicated the existence of insecticide resistance to various classes of insecticides including organophosphates, carbamates, and pyrethroids in field populations of P. operculella and P. absoluta. However, the exact mechanisms of insecticide resistance in P. operculella and to a lesser extent P. absoluta remain still poorly understood. Detecting resistance genotypes is crucial for the prediction and management of insecticide resistance. In this study, we identified multiple genetic mutations related to insecticide resistance in two species of Phthorimaea. An unexpected genetic divergence on target-site mutations was observed between P. operculella and P. absoluta. Three mutations (A201S, L231V, and F290V) in Ace1 (acetylcholinesterase), four mutations (M918T, L925M, T928I, and L1014F) in VGSC (voltage-gated sodium channel), and one mutation (A301S) in RDL (GABA-gated chloride channel) have been detected with varying frequencies in Chinese P. absoluta field populations. In contrast, P. operculella field populations showed three mutations (F158Y, A201S, and L231V) in Ace1, one mutation (L1014F) in VGSC at a lower frequency, and no mutation in RDL. These findings suggest that pyrethroids, organophosphates, and carbamates are likely to be ineffective in controlling P. absoluta, but not P. operculella. These findings contributed to a deeper understanding of the presence of target-site mutations conferring resistance to commonly used (and cheap) classes of insecticides in two closely related potato pests. It is recommended to consider the resistance status of both pests for the implementation of resistance management strategies in potatoes.

Opsin mutants alter host plant selection by color vision in the nocturnal invasive pest Tuta absoluta

In insects, vision is crucial in finding host plants, but its role in nocturnal insects is largely unknown. Vision involves responses to specific spectra of photon wavelengths and opsins plays an important role in this process. Long-wavelength sensitive opsin (LW opsin) and blue-sensitive opsin (BL opsin) are main visual opsin proteins and play important in behavior regulation.We used CRISPR/Cas9 technology to mutate the long-wavelength-sensitive and blue wavelength-sensitive genes and explored the role of vision in the nocturnal invasive pest Tuta absoluta. Light wave experiments revealed that LW2(−/−) and BL(−/−) mutants showed abnormal wavelength tropism. Both LW2 and BL mutations affected the preference of T. absoluta for the green environment. Mutations in LW2 and BL are necessary to inhibit visual attraction. The elimination of LW2 and BL affected the preference of leaf moths for green plants, and mutations in both induced a preference in moths for white plants. Behavioral changes resulting from LW2(−/−) and BL(−/−) mutants were not affected by sense of smell, further supporting the regulatory role of vision in insect behavior. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to reveal that vision, not smell, plays an important role in the host-seeking behavior of nocturnal insects at night, of which LW2 and BL opsins are key regulatory factors. These study findings will drive the development of the “vision-ecology” theory.