Elimination of whiteflies colonising greenhouse tomato plants using an electrostatic flying insect catcher

To control whiteflies attacking greenhouse tomatoes, we developed an efficient non-chemical method to control insecticide-resistant whiteflies using the attractive force of a newly devised racket-shaped electrostatic flying insect catcher (REIC). The REIC has two layers of insulated iron conductor wires (ICWs) in parallel arrays and two electrostatic direct current (DC) voltage generators that supply negative or positive voltages to the ICWs. Within each layer, the ICWs are arranged in parallel at 5-mm intervals, and connected to each other and to a negative or positive voltage generator. The negatively and positively charged ICWs are designated as ICW(–) and ICW(+), respectively. The two ICW layers are arranged in parallel with a 2-mm separation between the layers, and the ICWs of each layer are offset from the ICWs of the other layer. Adult whiteflies were blown into the space between the ICWs to determine the voltage range that captured all of the test insects. The result showed that at ≥4.0 kV, the force was strong enough that the ICWs captured all of the whiteflies, despite a wind speed of 3 m/s. The REIC is portable and easy to operate on site in a greenhouse. Whiteflies colonising tomato plants were forced to fly up in the air by gently tapping the plants, and the flying whiteflies were caught by the REIC waved once or twice in the air above the plants. The insect trapping operation was executed on greenhouse tomatoes at the time of daily plant care during the experimental period of 2 months. The results show that the tomato plants remained healthy until their fruit production, indicating that the REIC is a promising tool applicable to the practical control of insecticide-resistant whiteflies of greenhouse tomatoes.