Antagonistic and additive effect when combining biopesticides against the fall armyworm, Spodoptera frugiperda

Fall armyworm, Spodoptera frugiperda (FAW) is a cosmopolitan crop pest species that has recently become established in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. Current FAW control is almost entirely dependent on synthetic pesticides. 

Biopesticides offer a more sustainable alternative but have limitations. For example, pyrethrum is an effective botanical insecticide with low mammalian toxicity but is highly UV labile, resulting in a rapid loss of efficacy in the field. Beauveria bassiana is an entomopathogenic fungus that is more persistent, but there is a time lag of several days before it causes insect mortality and leads to effective control. The combination of these biopesticides could mitigate their drawbacks for FAW control. 

Here the researchers evaluated the efficacy of pyrethrum and B. bassiana as individual treatments and in combination against 3^rd instar FAW. Four different combinations of these two biopesticides were tested, resulting in an antagonistic relationship at the lowest concentrations of B. bassiana and pyrethrum (1 × 10⁴ conidia mL⁻¹ with 25 ppm) and an additive effect for the other 3 combined treatments (1 × 10⁴ conidia mL⁻¹ with 100 ppm and 1 × 10⁵ conidia mL⁻¹ with 25 ppm and 100 ppm pyrethrum). Additionally, a delay in efficacy from B. bassiana was observed when combined with pyrethrum as well as a general inhibition of growth on agar plates. 

These results appear to show that this particular combination of biopesticides is not universally beneficial or detrimental to pest control strategies and is dependent on the doses of each biopesticide applied. However, the additive effect shown here at specific concentrations does indicate that combining biopesticides could help overcome the challenges of persistence seen in botanical pesticides and the slow establishment of EPF, with the potential to improve effectiveness of biopesticides for IPM.

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