Development of pheromones for innovative management of Forest Bug, an emerging pest of orchards in England: FORBUG

Fruit-growing generates over £1 billion for the UK economy annually with apples and pears contributing over £250 million. Forest bug, Pentatoma rufipes, is an emerging pest in orchards, probably driven by the withdrawal of pesticides, and the effects of climate change. It causes fruit deformity and pitting which can result in up to 40% losses in productivity and waste due to unsaleable fruit.

The pest is currently monitored by laborious scouting for the pest in orchard trees. This project, FORBUG, originally set out to identify and synthesise species-specific pheromones for forest bug that would have provided an innovative approach for monitoring and controlling this pest. Despite extensive studies no pheromone was identified, however the project team had a ‘Eureka’ moment towards the end of the project and were successful in demonstrating adult forest bugs were attracted to light.

Hence, this finding offers an alternative solution to monitor and control adult forest bug in apple and pear orchards during peak times of flight in July. This approach will help reduce the need for conventional, chemical insecticides that disrupt integrated pest management programmes and potentially harm the environment.

Hence the scope of the project is broadly the same, but the mechanism of monitoring and control, light instead of pheromone attraction, has changed.

The project is led by Agrovista UK Ltd which is a leading supplier of agronomy advice, seed, crop protection products and precision farming services, working in partnership with horticultural growers. Other commercial partners are Avalon Fresh Ltd, an agronomic and technical advice provider across the fruit value chain and Russell IPM, a UK specialist producer of innovative products for pest and disease management. Russell IPM have been key in suggesting light as an attractant instead of pheromones and have expertise in light attraction of stink bugs. They are willing to provide light traps to continue research into 2024 so the momentum of this project which ends in March 2024 is not lost.

The industry partners originally collaborated with scientists from NIAB and NRI who have internationally recognised expertise in identification, synthesis, and application of pheromones for monitoring and control of insect pests. NIAB have submitted a follow-on project to British Apples and Pears Ltd for funding in 2024.

English apple and pear growers will be key to the follow-on project, and during FORBUG we have identified orchards where light attraction can be thoroughly tested. Because of the importance of the orchard industry to the UK economy, the outputs of a following project which involves the original expert team of partners will be particularly applicable here.

It should be noted that, forest bug is a pest in other European countries, so the light attraction commercial outcomes will have much wider impacts with the potential for developing new skills and products outside the region.