Resistance Potential of Chrysoperla carnea (Stephens) to Insecticides Used Against Sucking Complex of Cotton

The reported high loss mortality rate of green lacewing, (Chrysoperla carnea) have been attributed to diverse factors including unattended use of insecticides. Since chemical control is one of a significant practice to manage insect pest in cotton. However, this kind of practice may impair the natural control provided by generalist predator C. carnea. Although, natural control adoption is limited in crops, area and season due to wide-spread use of insecticides but presence of resistance potential in C. carnea may improve the design of solid IPM strategies. Herein, we aimed to assess the toxicity of four insecticides to two strains of C. carnea (viz. laboratory reared and field collected adults) and to evaluate their resistance potential by calculating their resistance ratio. LC50 was calculated at 24 h following topical application administered when the adults were 3 days old. Control adult mortalities were less than 10% at 24 h. The LC50 values (µl mL-1) for laboratory reared strains of each tested insecticide were: acetamiprid, 0.0064; bifenthrin, 3.75; chlorpyrifos, 0.067; and profenofos, 0.052. The LC50 values for field collected strains were 0.096 (acetamiprid), 34.8 (bifenthrin), 0.21 (chlorpyrifos) and 0.44 (profenofos). The toxicity of the test insecticide to C. carnea from more to least toxic was acetamiprid > profenofos > chlorpyrifos > bifenthrin. Field collected strain possessed 15 (acetamiprid)-, 9.28 (bifenthrin)-, 3.13 (chlorpyrifos)-, and 8.5 (profenofos)-fold more resistance than the susceptible population. These results are pretty worthwhile for integration of C. carnea in IPM programs, impairing with insecticides.