LAUSR

BACKGROUND Host plant resistance plays an important role in Integrated Pest Management programs. Crop resistance assessments commonly focus on only single dependent variable, such as larval survival/plant damage, which limits the ability to appreciate the impact of host plants on pest populations in a full sense. Therefore, we performed life table analyses for tomato leaf miner Tuta absoluta, on nineteen Solanum lycopersicum genotypes and a wild Solanum habrochaites accession. These analyses assess the ability of pest to attain high population density on different tomato genotypes. Based on the resulted ranking of tomato resistance at vegetative-stage (45 days old plants), we tested the resistance of six selected genotypes at reproductive-stage (4 months old plants). RESULTS T. absoluta performance was significantly inferior on vegetative-stage of S. habrochaites plants (LA-1777); time taken for the 1st instars to mine the leaves (5±0.14 days), developmental time of early and late stage larvae (8.8±0.2 and 4.2±0.2 days, respectively), pupal period (11.2±0.58 days), and total developmental time (29.4±0.83 days) were significantly longer, and fecundity was significantly lower (18.66±7.24 days), and also recorded highest total mortality (63.33%) as compared to other genotypes resulting in lowest net reproductive rate (R0 ) (11.20±2.51). For the six selected genotypes, the ranking of plant resistance did not change between plants at vegetative and reproductive-stages. CONCLUSION This study suggested that out of 20 screened tomato genotypes, LA-1777 and EC-620343 are the least suitable hosts for T. absoluta to establish fast-growing populations, and thus can be employed in integrated T. absoluta management. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.