Susceptibility to indoxacarb and synergism by enzyme inhibitors in laboratory and field strains of five major stored product insects in Pakistan

Abstract Resistance to commonly used grain protectants and fumigants in stored product insect pests necessitates the need to explore alternative substances. Indoxacarb is a reduced-risk oxadiazine insecticide that is generally used in field crops, but there are limited reports of its susceptibility in stored insect pests. The objective of this study was to determine susceptibility to indoxacarb in laboratory and field strains of five major stored product insects: Rhyzopertha dominica (Fabricius), Sitophilus zeamais (Motschulsky), S. oryzae (Linnaeus), Tribolium castaneum (Herbst), and Oryzaephilus surinamensis (L.), using dose-mortality bioassays on wheat grains. In most of the cases, the susceptibility of laboratory strains of all the studied pests were significantly higher than the corresponding field strains. The LD50 and LD99 values (mg a.i./kg of grains) of field strains ranged from 0.13 to 0.38, and 3.44 to 24.76, respectively (for R. dominica), 0.26 to 0.55, and 5.26 to 19.37, respectively (for S. oryzae), 0.41 to 1.01, and 13.11 to 22.46, respectively (for S. zeamais), 0.67 to 1.37, and 15.43 to 43.44, respectively (for T. castaneum), and 0.52 to 0.92, and 18.06 to 61.63, respectively (for O. surinamensis). Synergism bioassays implementing piperonyl butoxide or S,S,S-tributyl phosphorotrithioate along with indoxacarb on selected field strains revealed enhanced susceptibility to indoxacarb. The study demonstrates relative susceptibility to indoxacarb in major stored product insects. Synergism results support the probability of metabolic-based mechanisms responsible for mitigating indoxacarb toxicity. The results might be helpful for monitoring future variation in susceptibility to indoxacarb in the selected insect species and for setting field rates.