Coupling Biorational Tactics with Radio-Genetic F1 Sterility Technique for an Effective Integrated Pest Management against Lepidopteran Insects

Insect pests belonging to Lepidopteran order species are amongst the most damaging pests of food and fiber crops globally. Lepidopteran pests are often managed imprudently by spraying crops with large amounts of broad-spectrum and often persistent insecticides. In view of the increased occurrence of insecticidal resistance, and their negative impacts on the environment and ecosystems, the need for biorational environment friendly control tactics and eco-compatible Integrated Pest Management (IPM) strategy is becoming imperative and crucial. Both the sterile insect technique (SIT), and its refinement, Inherited (F1) Sterility (IS) technique offer a great potential as additional control tactics for integration with other control methods in area-wide IPM approaches against the lepidopteran pests. SIT/IS can only be applied successfully when the released sterile insects effectively compete with their wild counterparts for mating with wild females. There are a number of programmes where the SIT/IS has been used efficiently against key lepidopteran pests, and there is a great potential for further improvement and expansion of the SIT/IS technology to target other economically important lepidopteran pests. Sterile insect programmes (SIT/IS) as a parabiological control may be compatible with other biorational methods of control (viz., mating disruption, use of parasitoids, pathogens and predators, biorational molecules such as hormone mimics/agonists/antagonists, inhibitors for sperm activity, pheromone blockers, metabolic inhibitors, physiological disruptors, etc.) that may fetch enhanced or synergistic potential towards area-wide IPM against the lepidopteran pests, provided the employment of different biorational tactics is well orchestrated with their mode of action and targeted ontogenic stage of the pests.