Role of Flowering Plants on Rice Field Bunds in Enhancing Egg Parasitoid Abundance and Parasitism of the Yellow Rice Stem Borer (Scirpophaga incertulas Walker)
Keywords:
biological control, ecological engineering, egg parasitoid, flowering plants, Scirpophaga incertulas, Telenomus rowaniAbstract
The yellow rice stem borer (YRSB; Scirpophaga incertulas Walker) is a major insect pest of irrigated rice in tropical Asia, capable of reducing yields by 10–30% annually. Conservation biological control through habitat manipulation, particularly the introduction of flowering plants along rice field bunds, has emerged as a promising strategy to enhance natural enemy populations. This study evaluated the effect of flowering plant strips (long bean, soybean, sesame, and cucumber) on egg parasitoid abundance and parasitism rates of YRSB in Karanglo, Polanharjo District, Klaten Regency, Central Java, Indonesia. Two rice fields of equal size (900 m²) were compared: one with flowering plants on bunds under semi-organic management, and one without flowering plants under conventional management with insecticide applications. Surveys were conducted from October 2014 to January 2015. Two egg parasitoid species, Telenomus rowani and Tetrastichus schoenobii, were found exclusively in the flowering plant plot, whereas no parasitoids were detected in the control plot. Parasitism rates reached 39.47% per individual egg and 82.39% per egg mass in the flowering plant plot. Mean RSB attack intensity was lower in the flowering plant plot (2.99%) than the control (3.56%). However, these differences should be interpreted cautiously, as the two plots also differed in cultivation practices (semi-organic vs. conventional with insecticides), which constitutes a confounding variable. The findings support the integration of flowering plants, particularly sesame, as a component of ecological engineering strategies to conserve egg parasitoids in rice agroecosystems.
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