Influence of elevated CO on development and food utilization of armyworm fed on transgenic maize infected by nitrogen-fixing bacteria.

BACKGROUND

crops will face a new ecological risk of reduced effectiveness against target-insect pests owing to the general decrease in exogenous-toxin content in crops grown under elevated carbon dioxide (CO). The method chosen to deal with this issue may affect the sustainability of transgenic crops as an effective pest management tool, especially under future atmospheric CO level raising.

METHODS

In this study, rhizobacterias, as being one potential biological regulator to enhance nitrogen utilization efficiency of crops, was selected and the effects of maize (Line IE09S034 with vs. its parental line of non- maize Xianyu 335) infected by (AB) and (AC) on the development and food utilization of the target under ambient and double-ambient CO in open-top chambers from 2016 to 2017.

RESULTS

The results indicated that rhizobacteria infection significantly increased the larval life-span, pupal duration, relative consumption rate and approximate digestibility of , and significantly decreased the pupation rate, pupal weight, adult longevity, fecundity, relative growth rate, efficiency of conversion of digested food and efficiency of conversion of ingested food of fed on maize, while here were opposite trends in development and food utilization of fed on non- maize infected with AB and AC compared with the control buffer in 2016 and 2017 regardless of CO level.

DISCUSSION

Simultaneously, elevated CO and maize both had negative influence on the development and food utilization of . Presumably, CO concentration arising in future significantly can increase their intake of food and harm to maize crop; however, maize infected with rhizobacterias can reduce the field hazards from and the application of rhizobacteria infection can enhance the resistance of maize against target lepidoptera pests especially under elevated CO.