Synthetic pyrethroids have been the most widely used insecticide group for control of Plutella xylostella in southern Australia since the early 1980’s. Insecticide resistance in Australian populations of P. xylostella was first confirmed in Queensland in 1987. Since then, resistant populations have developed throughout southern Australia with reports of insecticide control failures coming from ...

The following stress factors were tested for their effect on the susceptibility of Plutella xylostella (L.) to Bacillus thuringiensis Berliner: (a) exposure to low doses of the synthetic pyrethroid cypermethrin, (b) treatment with low doses of the secondary plant compound, azadirachtin and (c) development on partially resistant cabbage cultivars. B. thuringiensis-related mortality of cypermethr...

Electrophoresis is currently the best technique for quantifying inherited variation which has contributed to our knowledge of population biology in revealing population structure. Considerable variation in isozymes of diamondback moth, Plutella xylostella (L.), was detected. Esterase zymograms were prepared from 3rd and 4th instar larvae, pupae and adults. There were two groups of esterase band...

Host plants affect development, survival, and reproduction of phytophagous insects. In the case of holometabolous species, whose larvae have little mobility to find a host plant, the ability of females to discriminate hosts on the basis of their nutritional quality may be an important factor determining insect performance. The preference‒performance correlation hypothesis states that females wi...

Chemically inducible production of Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) toxins in transgenic plants may provide considerable benefits in preventing or delaying the evolution of insect resistance to Bt crops by creating within-plant temporal refuges. We examined the effect of inducible cry1Ab expression on survival of different genotypes (RR, RS, and SS) of diamondback moth, Plutella xylostella (L.), in ...

Quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) is an efficient and widely used technique to monitor gene expression. Housekeeping genes (HKGs) are often empirically selected as the reference genes for data normalization. However, the suitability of HKGs used as the reference genes has been seldom validated. Here, six HKGs were chosen (actin A3, actin A1, GAPDH, G3PDH, E2F, rp49) in fou...

The tools of insect pest management include host plant resistance, biological control, and insecticides and how they are integrated will influence the durability of each. We created a detailed model of the population dynamics and population genetics of the diamondback moth, Plutella xylostella L., and its parasitoid, Diadegma insulare (Cresson), to study long-term pest management in broccoli Br...

The molecular mechanisms of insect resistance to Cry toxins generated from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) urgently need be elucidated enable improvement and sustainability Bt-based products. Although downregulation expression midgut receptor genes is a pivotal mechanism Bt toxins, underlying transcriptional regulation these remains elusive. Herein, we unraveled regulatory ABC transpo...