TY - JOUR
AU - Cristofaro, Massimo
AB - One of the fundamental challenges of pre-release studies in classical biological weed control is to assess and predict the likelihood and consequences of non-target effects. Unless a candidate biological control agent is proven to be monophagous through conventional starvation and host-specificity tests in quarantine, open-field host range studies can be important in predicting the likelihood of non-target effects since they reveal the host selection of herbivores displaying the whole array of pre- and post-alightment behaviours. Over the course of its 53-year history, the purpose and the design of open-field host range studies have changed considerably, with more recent studies clarifying or refining specific questions related to one or a few test plant species and using a set design. We discuss the opportunities and challenges of this approach and suggest that future open-field host range studies should be more hypothesis-driven and apply different experimental designs that facilitate the interpretation of the results.
TI - A review of open-field host range testing to evaluate non-target use by herbivorous biological control candidates
JF - BioControl
DO - 10.1007/s10526-018-9875-7
DA - 2018-03-05
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/springer-journals/a-review-of-open-field-host-range-testing-to-evaluate-non-target-use-R2U6T4o2h1
SP - 405
EP - 416
VL - 63
IS - 3
DP - DeepDyve
ER -