engleski

New and modern tools for investigating pest resistance

Resistance to pesticides is a serious and growing problem in agricultural production. Western corn rootworm (Diabrotica virgifera virgifera LeConte) (WCR), Colorado potato beetle (Leptinotarsa decemlineata Say) (CPB) and Codling moth (Cydia pomonella L.) (CM) are the most important pests in Croatian agriculture that have developed resistance to many insecticides and established management strategies as well. Therefore, there is a need for some new tools and methods (such as geometric morphometrics and SNPs) to investigate pest resistance which development and optimization are main objective of a new project on Faculty of Agriculture Zagreb. Metric properties of insects are under the influence of environmental and genetic factors and they are first physical characters to change in an organism. Geometric morphometric (i.e., size and shape analysis) is a new technique which can be used to detect and monitor resistant variants. Geometric morphometric markers can be used to detect smaller and subtler changes in population structure that have occurred more recently. By analyzing the body/wing size and shape it is possible to show the invasive adaption of the adults’ traits to the different environmental influences. The use of WCR, CPB and CM wing shape and size measurements will be explored as a population marker for detection of differences between non-resistant and resistant variants. Another possible technique for detection of resistance, which is under our survey, is single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) method. SNPs are single base substitutions found at a single genomic locus. SNPs have lower allele diversity and provide less statistical power to discriminate unique genotypes but have a denser and uniform distribution within genomes which make them useful for population and mapping studies. SNPs has become an affordable and readily accessible means of generating important data on a species. Detail genomic description could give us an answer about genetically conditioned resistance development. Combining genetic and geometric morphometric populations monitoring, we will try to identify the addition or deletion of alleles and different haplotypes, and the genetic and morphometric patterns which has developed under resistance process. The use of these modern and innovative techniques (i.e. population genetics and geometric morphometric) for detection of resistant variants is a completely novel approach and presents new insights into this important pest management area.

monitoring techniques, SNPs, population genetics, resistant populations

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