ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Agron.
Sec. Pest Management
Identification and Characterization of Volatile Attractants for the Flower Thrips, (Frankliniella intonsa), from the Host Hemerocallis citrina
Provisionally accepted
- 1Shanxi Agricultural University, Jinzhong, China
- 2Shanxi Key Laboratory of Integrated Pest Management in Agriculture, College of Plant Protection, Shanxi Agricultural University, taiyuan, China
- 3Shanxi Agricultural University College of Horticulture, Taiyuan, China
- 4College of Plant Protection, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China;, chongqing, China
- 5Shanxi Huashi Group Co., Ltd., Taiyuan 030031, China, taiyuan, China
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The flower thrips (Frankliniella intonsa Trybom) is a widespread pest and a significant threat to vegetables worldwide, including China. In recent years, the flower thrips infestation in daylily planting regions have become increasingly severe. Field investigation revealed that the distribution of flower thrips varied significantly across different parts of the daylily (Hemerocallis citrina Baroni), with the highest abundance observed on floral organs, which accounted for 53.91 ± 4.25% of the population. The volatile compounds emitted by the daylily at three physiological stages -leafing, bolting, and flowering-were identified and analyzed by gas chromatography mass spectrometry (GC-MS). A total of 60 volatile compounds were detected, among which aromatic compounds, particularly sesquiterpenes, were most prominent during periods of peak thrip infestations. The key compounds identified included E-β-farnesene, nerol, linalool, α-curcumene,β-pinene, and β-ocimene. Behavioral assays conducted using a Y-tube olfactometer demonstrated that E-β-farnesene, nerol, and linalool attracted flower thrips at concentrations of 100 μg/μL and 10 μg/μL. Field trapping experiments showed that the attractive effect of nerol (160.0 ± 98.6 thrips/trap) and a mixed-component lure (182.5 ± 83.7 thrips/trap) outperfomed other individual components. The yellow sticky cards (111.5 ± 24.1 thrips/trap) attracted more thrips than blue and yellow-black striped cards. The combination of the three active components produced a synergistic effect on all three card types, increasing the number of captured thrips by 82.3%, 43.3%, and 72.1% for yellow, blue, and yellow-black striped cards, respectively. These findings provide a theoretical foundation for environmentally friendly control strategies for flower thrips using volatiles of host plants.
Keywords: Host plant volatile, Olfactory response, pest management, Aggregation, Thrip
Received: 09 Sep 2025; Accepted: 16 Dec 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Liu, Wang, Zhai, Su, Liu, Lv, Xing and Jie. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Guoming Xing
Li Jie
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