Determination of Oviposition Preference and Infestation Level of Tuta absoluta on Major Solanaceae Crops Under Glasshouse Conditions in Ethiopia

Tuta absoluta (Meyrick) is a very destructive insect pest with a strong preference for tomato plants. It originates from South America where it has been considered a key pest since the 1980s. It can also attack the aerial parts of tomato, potato, tobacco and some solanaceous weeds. Based on the leaf and fruit-infestation data, four genotypes of tomato (Coshoro, Roman-VF, Galila and Local var.), showed susceptible responses; four genotypes of potato (Jalane, Menagesha, Tolcha and Local var.) showed a tolerant trend and four pepper genotypes (M. Awaze, M. Fana, M. Zala and Local var.), with non-infestation and high resistant, were resulted during 2015-2017. Significant differences were observed, among the genotypes, regarding to the oviposition, in number of eggs/plant. Tomato, showed a maximum oviposition of 62.38%/plant on upper leaf followed by lower leaf 35.72%/plant; while minimum oviposition was recorded to be on flower 0.37% and stem 0.53% per plant, respectively. In contrast, on potato genotypes the maximum ovipostion was recorded on lower leaf as an average 79.63%/plant and 15.11% was recorded on upper leaf; while minimum oviposition were recorded on stem of potato genotypes as an average 1.93%/plant and on all pepper genotype no oviposition was recorded in both years. Variations were found to be significant among dates of observation, regarding to the larval-population and infestation-percentage of the leaf and fruits, during both the study years. There were no significant (P>0.05) differences among each crop varieties. Hence, these present findings are suggest that T. absoluta oviposition behavior is dependent on the host plant preferences among major solanaceae crops and not on varieties of each crop.