Biological and age–stage, two-sex life table parameters of greenhouse whitefly, Trialeurodes vaporariorum (Hem., Aleyrodidae) on three important greenhouse crops

Greenhouse whitefly, Trialeurodes vaporariorum is one of the most important pests of greenhouse crops throughout the world. In this research, biology and life table parameters of this pest were studied on eggplant, cucumber and tomato plants at 25±2 oC, 65±10% RH and a photoperiod of 16:8 h(L:D) based on age-stage, two-sex life table procedure. The means were estimated using Bootstrap method with 100000 replicates. Based on the obtained results, there was a significant difference between the average of all biological parameters of the pest and the average of all the pest population growth parameters on the three host plants. Results showed that, pre-adult developmental time of the pest were 21.87±0.17, 23.34±0.19 and 2 5.37±0.15 days; female longevity were 32.96±1.24, 28.76±1.4 and 25.21±0.92 days; and female fecundity were estimated to be 233.93±8.2, 156.73±5.01 and 129.39±4.66 egg/female on eggplant, cucumber and tomato plants, respectively. Intrinsic rate of increase(r) and net reproduction rate (R0) of the pest on three mentioned plants were 0.144±0.005, 0.128±0.005 and 0.118±0.005 (d-1), and 108.90±15.76, 68.96±9.22 and 57.35±8.53 (female/female/generation), respectively. Overall, in this study eggplant in compared with two other plants, was more appropriate host plant for developing and increase of the greenhouse whitefly population.