Biodiversity role in management of South American tomato pinwormTuta absoluta(Meyrick, 1917) (Lepidoptera: Gelechiidae)

Abstract

In an agroecological context, environmental diversification is one of the components that could be planned to suppress insect pest populations. The objective of this work was to compare the populational densities of South American tomato pinworm Tuta absoluta (MEYRICK, 1917) (Lepidoptera: Gelechiidae) in organic and conventional tomato cropping to verify if the damage caused by tomato pinworm is influenced by environmental complexity, and evaluate if the species diversity associated with tomato crops could increase natural enemies performance and influence tomato pinworm populations. The results are: 1. the tomato pinworm presented greater ability to colonize the conventional tomato crop system compared to the organic crop system; 2. organic tomato/coriander treatments showed lower egg and caterpillar population densities and greater natural enemy diversity and abundance when coriander was planted priori to tomatoes and 3. other herbivore abundance was greater in organic treatments, showing that the frequent use of insecticides eliminates generalist herbivores, selecting the main pests, like tomato pinworm.