Hi,

are you trying different varieties of strawberry?

Are you trying with other thrips?

Did you try with males?

I am assuming that some phytochemical is effecting the thrips feeding process or even the trichome density.

Here are some articles that could be useful for your research:

Article Variation in Preference and Performance of Frankliniella occ...

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33479778/

https://content.ces.ncsu.edu/flower-thrips-in-strawberries#section_heading_2598

Article Susceptibility of some new strawberry genotypes to infestati...

Best regards

Hallo Francesco,

We are only using western flower thrips. The cultivar was previously shown to be susceptible. I am not experienced in thrips assays, the simplicity of the assay on paper does not match reality ;-) In the mean time we have added a higher number of thrips and that seems to have remedied the problem, at least the feeding damage is now at a measurable level. We will also be looking at trichome density. Thank you for the articles they are quite helpful.

greetings,

Kelly

Hi Kelly,

We did similar assays with F. occidentalis and strawberry leaf disks, with 10 adult females per arena(800mm²), after 6 days there was about 30% damaged surface (calculated using ImageJ). F. occidentalis is not very fond of the hard strawberry leaf (in the field they obviously prefer the flowers and fruits), rearing them on vegatative strawberry plants is even hard to do (in comparisson to soft tissue plants like beans). If you are to use strawberry, i suggest using young leaves.

Good luck!

Groeten,

Rik