248 Kamala Jayanthi PD et al.
been identified and synthesized successfully in
the lab and confirmed their bioactivity by GC-
EAD (Seema 2009 ).
The role of semiochemicals was less explored
for the notorious fruit piercing moths, Eudocima
spp that are serious pests on commercially im-
portant crops including pomegranate, citrus,
guava, mango, papaya, litchi, carambola, grapes,
eggplant tomato, etc. This pest occurs not only
in the tropics all around the world including In-
do-Australian-Pacific region but also in Africa.
Moths feed at night by penetrating the rind of
ripe fruits with their strong proboscis and suck
the juice. Internal injury consists of a bruised dry
area beneath the skin. Secondary rots develop at
the puncture site. Fermenting fruits are often vis-
ited and fed on by secondary-moth feeders taking
advantage of the access hole drilled by this fruit
piercing moth. The management for this moth in-
cludes insecticidal control, night watching, hand
collection of moths, moth destruction using light
traps, bonfires, and altering cropping period that
have limited impact. No attempts to explore the
possibility of phytosemiochemicals were made.
However, semiochemicals may have tremendous
impact on the moth, which breeds on a specific
creeper host, Tenospora cordifolia L.
Usually cecidomyids select hosts and mates by
means of olfactory signals. Semiochemical trap
can be a sensitive monitoring tool for detection,
timing treatments, monitoring population trend,
etc. in gall midges owing to their minute, incon-
spicuous body size and sudden outbreaks. In the
recent past, numbers of chemical identifications
of gall midge sex pheromones have been accu-
mulated highlighting the feasibility of practical
pheromone based field monitoring in these diffi-
cult to detect insects (Bruce and Smart 2009 ). In
mango, leaf gall midges viz., Procontarinia mat-
teiana Kieffer and Cecconi, inflorescence midge,
E. indica, are attaining serious status causing
severe damage. Similarly, in case of shoot gall
psylla, A. cistallata, an unique univoltine species
that causes huge direct damage through transfor-
mation of reproductive and vegetative buds in to
galls (Jha et al. 2013 ); optimizing a sex phero-
mone-based method of monitoring may help to
attract psyllids to traps as being practiced in sev-
eral other crops (Pear psylla, Cacopsylla pyricola
(Forster), Guédot et al. 2009 ). Similarly, a psyllid
repellent that was discovered by scientists ex-
ploring why citrus trees planted near guava trees
had fewer citrus psyllids revealed that the com-
pound dimethyl disulphide (DMSD), identified
in volatiles emitted by the guava trees was found
in laboratory tests to be highly repellent to citrus
psyllid. Recent trials have shown that the potato
psyllid is also repelled by the compound.Vegetable Crop Pests
At present the prospects of using semiochemical
technologies for controlling various insect pests
of vegetable crops are mainly limited to sex pher-
omones of lepidopterans and tephritid fruit flies.
Among the lepidopterans, (Z) 11 hexadecanal +
(Z) hexadecanal (97:3) (popular as Helilure- for
Helicoverpa armigera); (Z, E), 9,11 tetradecanyl
acetate + (Z, E) 9,12-dienyl acetate (19:1) (popu-
lar as Spodolure for Spodoptera litura); (E)-11
hexadecenyl acetate + (E)-11-hexadecen-1-o1
(100:1) (popular as Leucilure for brinjal fruit
and shoot borer, Leucinodes orbonalis); (Z)-
hexadecanal-11-enal + (Z)-exzadec-11-enyl ac-
etate (popular as Nomate-DBM, Checkmate for
diamondback moth-DBM, Plutella xylostella)
and tephritid fruit flies 4-(4-hydroxyphenyl)-
2-butanone acetate (as Cuelure for cucurbit fruit
fly, B. cucurbitae) are commercially available
and fitting well in to the current IPM programs.
The possibility of exploring and integrating po-
tent viable semiochemical approaches of either
insect or plant derived chemical cues for several
priority target pests across vegetable crops viz.,
solanaceae, cruciferaceae, cucurbitaceae, etc
where semiochemical scientific input is lacking
will pave the way for new interventions to make
current IPM programs more robust (Table 1 ).
Among vegetable crops, except for major
lepidopteran pests ( H. armigera, S. litura and L.
orbonalis, P. xylostella) where sex pheromones
are being used predominantly for monitor-
ing and to an extent in the management of this
pest (Tamhankar et al. 2003 ; Anju et al. 2004 ;
Sun et al. 2002 , 2003 ; Gedia et al. 2007 ; Logna-