Monitoring, cross-resistance, inheritance, and fitness costs of brown planthoppers, Nilaparvata lugens, resistance to pymetrozine in China

BACKGROUND

The brown planthopper, Nilaparvata lugens, is considered the most destructive pest of rice in many Asian countries including China. Use of pymetrozine in insect resistance management (IRM) has been one strategy to control this pest. In this study, we reported the status of pymetrozine resistance in Nilaparvata lugens (Stål) collected from China over the period 2017-2021 and selected a strain of N. lugens resistant to pymetrozine and evaluated the cross-resistance, inheritance and fitness costs of the resistance.

RESULTS

Monitoring data (2017-2021) showed that field populations of N. lugens in China developed moderate- to high-level pymetrozine resistance during these 5 years. By continuous selection with pymetrozine in the lab, the pymetrozine selected N. lugens strain (Pym-R₉₈ ) developed a 225.2-fold resistance compared to a susceptible strain. The Pym-R₉₈ strain showed high cross-resistance to dinotefuran (66.6-fold) and low cross-resistance to nitenpyram (5.2-fold) and sulfoxaflor (5.8-fold). Inheritance pattern analysis of Pym-R₉₃ revealed that resistance to pymetrozine was polygenic, autosomal and incompletely dominant. Fitness costs of pymetrozine resistance were present in Pym-R₉₀ and WA2020 strains with a relative fitness of 0.72 and 0.60, respectively. The developmental duration of Pym-R₉₀ and WA2020 was significantly longer and hatchability was significantly lower compared to pymetrozine-susceptible strain (Pym-S).

CONCLUSIONS

N. lugens has developed high level of resistance to pymetrozine. Pymetrozine-resistance brown planthopper had cross-resistance with some of neonicotinoids such as dinotefuran, nitenpyram and sulfoxaflor. The autosomal, incompletely dominant and polygenic resistance to pymetrozine in N. lugens and the fitness costs associated with this resistance can be exploited in IRM strategies to preserve the lifetime of pymetrozine for control of N. lugens in China. © 2022 Society of Chemical Industry.

Effects of nicotinic acetylcholine receptor subunit deletion mutants on insecticide susceptibility and fitness in Drosophila melanogaster

BACKGROUND

Nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs) are major excitatory neurotransmitter receptors in insects and also the target site for many insecticides. Unfortunately, the effectiveness of these insecticides is diminishing as a consequence of the evolution of insecticide resistance. Further exploration of insecticide targets is important to sustainable pest management.

RESULTS

In order to validate the role of nAChR subunits in insecticide susceptibility and test whether the subunit's absence imposes the fitness cost on insects, we determined the susceptibility of eight nAChR subunit deletion mutants of Drosophila melanogaster to nine insecticides. These findings highlighted the specific resistance of the Dα6 deletion mutant to spinosyns. Although triflumezopyrim, dinotefuran and imidacloprid are competitive modulators of nAChRs, differences in susceptibility of the insect with different deletion mutants suggested that the target sites of these three insecticides do not overlap completely. Mutants showed decreased susceptibility to insecticides, accompanied by a reduction in fitness. The number of eggs produced by Dα1^attP , Dα2^attP , Dβ2^attP and Dβ3^attP females was significantly lesser than that of the vas-Cas9 strain as the control. In addition, adults of Dα2^attP , Dα3^attP and Dα7^attP strains showed lower climbing performance. Meanwhile, males of Dα3^attP , Dα5^attP , Dβ2^attP and Dβ3^attP , and females of Dβ2^attP showed significantly shorter longevity than those of the vas-Cas9 strain.

CONCLUSION

This study provides new insights into the interactions of different insecticides with different nAChRs subunit in D. melanogaster as a research model, it could help better understand such interaction in agricultural pests whose genetic manipulations for toxicological research are often challenging. © 2022 Society of Chemical Industry.

Overexpression of ATP-binding cassette transporter Mdr49-like confers resistance to imidacloprid in the field populations of brown planthopper, Nilaparvata lugens

BACKGROUND

The brown planthopper (BPH), Nilaparvata lugens (Stål), is the most severe pest attacking rice crops using sucking mouthparts. It causes significant damages to rice growth and food production worldwide. With the long-term and wide use of insecticides, field populations of BPH have developed resistance to many insecticides.

RESULTS

Here, we showed that upregulation of an ATP-binding cassette transporter gene NlMdr49-like contributes to imidacloprid resistance in field populations of BPH. A comparative transcriptome analysis was performed to evaluate the gene expression in two field populations (JXSG18 and YNTC18). Compared with a susceptible strain (Sus), 202 upregulated genes and 170 downregulated genes were identified in both field populations. Functional enrichment analysis revealed that the differentially expressed genes (DEGs) are mainly linked to metabolic process and transmembrane transport. Among the candidate DEGs, NlMdr49-like was significantly upregulated in both field populations. Based on the genome and transcriptome of BPH, the full-length complementary DNA of NlMdr49-like was sequenced and its molecular characteristics were analyzed. Expression pattern analysis of various tissues showed that NlMdr49-like was predominantly expressed in midgut and Malpighian tubules which are important excretion organs. Knocking down NlMdr49-like reduced BPH resistance to imidacloprid, but did not affect its resistance to the other nine insecticides (chlorpyrifos, thiamethoxam, nitenpyram, dinotefuran, sulfoxaflor, triflumezopyrim, ethiprole, buprofezin and pymetrozine). Furthermore, a transgenic strain of Drosophila melanogaster overexpressing NlMdr49-like was less susceptible to imidacloprid.

CONCLUSIONS

Our findings indicate that upregulation of NlMdr49-like is another mechanism contributing to imidacloprid resistance in N. lugens. This result is helpful to further understand the resistance mechanism of N. lugens to imidacloprid. © 2021 Society of Chemical Industry.

Baseline determination, susceptibility monitoring and risk assessment to triflumezopyrim in Nilaparvata lugens (Stål)

Triflumezopyrim, a novel mesoionic chemical insecticide, is promoted as a powerful tool for control of susceptible and resistant hopper species in rice throughout Asia. For a newly commercialized insecticide it is important to establish susceptibility baseline, conduct susceptibility monitoring, and assess the risk of resistance via artificial selection to provide foundational information on designing resistance management strategy. The susceptibility baseline of triflumezopyrim was established for three rice planthopper species, Nilarpavata lugens (Stål), Sogatella furcifera (Horváth) and Laodelphax striatellus (Fallén). The LD₅₀ of triflumezopyrim was 0.026, 0.032 and 0.094 ng/individual for the adults of the susceptible strains of S. furcifera, L. striatellus and N. lugens, respectively, determined by a topical application method. Using a rice stem (seedling) dipping method, the LC₅₀ was determined as 0.042, 0.024 and 0.150 mg/L for the nymphs (3rd instar) of the three hopper species, respectively. In the meanwhile, the LC₅₀ of Pyraxalt™ (triflumezopyrim 10% SC) was 0.064 mg/L for the N. lugens susceptible strain. Furthermore, the susceptibility of triflumezopyrim and other five neonicotinoid insecticides were monitored for N. lugens field populations collected from major rice production areas in China in 2015-2019. All monitored populations were susceptible to triflumezopyrim (0.5 to 3.9-fold resistance ratio), and showed no cross-resistance to the other five neonicotinoids. These results suggested that triflumezopyrim is a good option to control resistant N. lugens. In addition, a field-collected population of N. lugens was artificially selected with triflumezopyrim for 20 generations and resulted in 3.5-fold increase in LC₅₀ from F₀ and 6.0-fold increase from that of the susceptible strain. The realized heritability (h²) of resistance was estimated as 0.0451 by using threshold trait analysis. With this h² value, the projected triflumezopyrim resistance development (a 10-fold increase in LC₅₀) would be expected after 30.3 or 24.0 generations if 80% or 90% of the population was killed at each generation.