Assessment of the arthropods associated with the Amaranth crop in the central Argentina

NIVEYRO SELENE; BAUDINO ESTELA; FALKENSTEIN LUCAS; SAENZ CLAUDIO

Nitra

Simposio; 5th International Symposium of the European Amaranth Association; 2008

Institute of Plant Genetics and Biotechnology, Slovak Academy of Sciences

The plant of amaranth is characterised by the high nutritional value of their leaves and a contained multifaceted high place in the grain. The aim of this work was to study the arthropods associated with the above mentioned culture. The trial was performed on an amaranth crop sown in a plot of the experimental field in the Faculty of Agronomy of the UNLPam, Santa Rosa (La Pampa), Argentina. The essay was carried out by means of a completely ramdomized blocks design (N = 4) with 18 treatments (varieties) per block. Sampling of the arthropods consisted on inspecting 6 whole plants (stem, petioles and both sides of the leaf) in each weekly treatment during the whole development of the crop. The insects sampled were sorted into ten orders with 21 families and 23 genera. The orders with the largest number of families were Coleoptera (6) and Hemiptera (4).During germination the phytophagous species with highest population was Acromyrmex striatus (Roger) (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). During the vegetative stages the most abundant were Epicauta adspersa (Kluj) (Coleoptera: Meloidae), Nezara viridula (L.) and Edessa meditabunda (F.) (Hemiptera: Pentatomidae), whereas in the reproductive stages the population of Tetranychus urticae (Koch) (Acari: Tetranychidae) prevailed.