China Academy of Agricultural Sciences clarifies the mechanism of cotton pest population status succession

Recently, the Economic Crop Pest Monitoring and Control Team of the Institute of Plant Protection of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences has clarified the status of cotton pest population succession mechanism and provided an important scientific basis for the prevention and control of pests. Related research results are published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

The study is based on historical monitoring data of 51 cotton-growing counties in the Yellow River and Yangtze River basins in China from 1991 to 2015. The system analyzes land use, Bt cotton planting, climatic conditions and other factors for cotton bollworm, blind mites and cotton aphid. The effect of pest damage.

The results show that Bt cotton has a profound impact on the occurrence and control of cotton pests. Bt cotton planting controls the population of cotton bollworm, and the use of cotton bollworm to control insecticides has dropped significantly, which has led to a significant increase in the control of natural aborigines against aphids. Blind mites aggravate with the use of cotton field pesticides, and the high temperature in May helps blind mites occur. The impact of farmland landscape factors on pests varies by pest species. The occurrence of cotton aphid and blind mites decreased with the increase of land use diversity, but the correlation between the occurrence degree of cotton bollworm and land use diversity was not obvious. There was a negative correlation between the incidence of blind mites and the proportion of forest, water and undeveloped land, and the degree of occurrence of cotton bollworms was positively correlated with the proportion of water bodies and undeveloped land. The use of chemical pesticides in the lighter occurrence of cotton bollworms is likely to exacerbate the occurrence and catastrophe of cotton bollworms in the area.