Source: NCSU COLLEGE OF AG & LIFE SCIENCES, 10/19/20


The western flower thrips — an invasive insect that’s not much bigger than a pinhead — takes a huge bite out of agriculture around the world, racking up billions of dollars’ worth of damage on a wide range of food, fiber and ornamental crops each year. Scientists now have a complete genetic blueprint to help them better understand the pest and to find ways to control it.

A peer-reviewed scientific paper published in BMC Biology today (Monday Oct. 19) fills a significant gap in agricultural science and insect science: It highlights the first genome sequence and analysis for a member of Thysanoptera, an order that contains over 7,000 species of small insects with fringed wings.

They’re a major pest of the Southeast U.S. and California as well as anywhere around the world you have a lot of fruits and vegetables growing.

Dorith Rotenberg, associate professor with North Carolina State University’s Department of Entomology and Plant Pathology, is lead author of the paper. Fifty-six other researchers from universities and research institutions on five continents contributed.
Rotenberg said that the size of the team reflects the importance of the western flower thrips, or Frankliniella occidentalis, which is known to feed on hundreds of types of field and greenhouse-grown crops.

“They’re on everything — flowers, fruit trees, solanaceous crops — you name it,” Rotenberg said. “They’re a major pest of the Southeast U.S. and California as well as anywhere around the world you have a lot of fruits and vegetables growing.”

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