Breeding Food Legumes for Resistance to Storage Insect Pests: Potential and Limitations

Sustainability

Gemechu Keneni²  Endashaw Bekele³  Emana Getu³  Muhammad Imtiaz⁴  Tebkew Damte¹  Bayeh Mulatu² 

[1] Debre Zeit Agricultural Research Center, P.O. Box 32, Debre Zeit, Ethiopia; E-Mail:;Holetta Agricultural Research Center, P.O. Box 2003, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; E-Mail:;Faculty of Life Sciences, Addis Ababa University, P.O. Box 1176, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; E-Mails:;International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), P.O. Box 5466, Aleppo, Syria; E-Mail:

关键词: resistance breeding;    food legumes;    storage insect pests;   

DOI  :  10.3390/su3091399

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

Storage insect pests cause significant losses of food legumes particularly in the Tropics and the Sub-tropics. The most important species of storage insect pests of food legumes include Callosobruchus chinensis, C. maculatus, C. analis, Acanthoscelides obtectus, Bruchus incarnatus, B. rufimanus, B. dentipes, B. quinqueguttatus, B. emarginatus, B. ervi, B. lentis and B. pisorum. Effective post-harvest insect pest control measures should constitute part of the overall crop husbandry practices for preserving the quality of produce. Storage insect pests are commonly controlled using chemical insecticides which, however, bear many drawbacks related to high cost, environmental pollution and food safety risks. Breeding legume crops to improve their resistance against storage insect pests, although having technical limitations, is the best way of overcoming these disadvantages in an environment-friendly manner. In this paper, we present the findings of our extensive reviews on the potential of breeding resistant varieties of food legumes against storage insect pests along with the major technical limitations one would likely encounter and the prospective ways of tackling them.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2011 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.