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ARS Home » Southeast Area » Tifton, Georgia » Crop Genetics and Breeding Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #173825
Title: Feeding Injury

Author
item QUISENBERRY, SHARRON - VIRGINIA TECH
item Ni, Xinzhi

Submitted to: Book Chapter
Publication Type: Book / Chapter
Publication Acceptance Date: 10/15/2006
Publication Date: 10/1/2007
Citation: Quisenberry, S.S., Ni, X. 2007. Feeding Injury. In: Van Emden, H.F., Harrington, editors. Aphids as Crop Pests. CAB International, Oxfordshire, UK.p. 331-352.

Interpretive Summary: not required

Technical Abstract: Aphids are a group of piercing-sucking insects which engender significant economic losses on a variety of crops worldwide. The redoubtable impact of aphid injury on agriculture has been well-documented in the history of agronomy, dendrology, and horticulture, in particular, enology and pomology. The study of aphid-elicited injury is an interdisciplinary, if not a pandisciplinary topic of all agricultural sciences. The aphids are more than live plant-sap-syringes because they secrete and inject saliva into plants before ingesting plant sap. Plant responses to aphid feeding can be either asymptomatic or symptomatic in nature. Aphid-elicited injury symptoms on plants range from developmental desistance to neoplasm. Desistance is defined as the ceasing of plant growth (e.g., chlorosis and necrosis), while neoplasm is defined as abnormal proliferation of plant tissues (e.g., different types of tissue galls). We propose a classification scheme for aphid feeding injury in accordance with the symptoms that aphids elicit. Recent understandings of biochemical and physiological mechanisms of aphid injury symptom formation serve as the basis for the proposed classification scheme. Additionally, we discuss the ramifications of studying aphid injury in relation to improving crop resistance to aphid and other sap-feeding herbivores, as well as research frontiers in understanding etiology of aphid injury.