Manipulation of Insect Behavior by Mating Disruption Technique

Insect pest management has relied predominantly on conventional insecticides, but due to
wide spread concern over potential hazards and development of resistance, alternative
control methods have been developed. One such potential management tactic is the use of
pheromones as mating disruption technique in pest management. The idea of dispersing sex
pheromones inside a crop canopy to prevent insect pests from reproducing initiated in the
early 1960s which contributed to the development of chemical ecology and continued to be
well-known for a variety of reasons. Mating disruption is a technique that affects sexual
behaviour of insect by saturating the surrounding environment by synthetic sex
pheromones, where the ability of males to recognize the natural sex pheromone produced
by females are disrupted so delaying the time for females to mate. This approach can be
successful when mating disruption targets the key pest at low population densities. The
combination of pheromone formulations with other management tactics can increase the
efficacy of the formulation on the target pest, help to prevent the development of resistance
to any one given management tactic and contribute for the management of more than one
insect pest.