Qush Abeer, Assaad Nada, Alkhayat Fatima Abdulla, Al-Kuwari Mohammed Saif, Al-Khalaf Nasser, Bassil Maya, Yassine Hadi M, Zeidan Asad, Razali Rozaimi, Kamareddine Layla
Department of Biomedical Sciences, College of Health Sciences, QU Health, Qatar University, Doha, Qatar.
Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences, College of Arts and Sciences, Qatar University, Doha, Qatar.
Front Plant Sci. 2025 May 19;16:1581707. doi: 10.3389/fpls.2025.1581707. eCollection 2025.
With the predicted 9-10 billion world population increase by 2050 and its accompanying need for sustainable food production, and with the harsh climate conditions challenging agriculture and food security in many countries world-wide, employing "horticultural protected cultivation practices" in farming for seasonal and off-seasonal crop production is on the rise, among which is the use of agricultural greenhouses. The importance of greenhouse farming has been, indeed, evident by the perceived increase in year-round crops production, curtail in production risks, upsurge in agricultural profits, outreaching food stability and security in many countries globally. Yet, and despite this acknowledged success of employing greenhouses in farming, many constraints, including the presence of insect pests, still chaperoned this practice over the years, significantly impacting crop quality and production.
As such, we assessed in this study the status of "insect pests" in the greenhouse model by collecting insects from different greenhouse sectors grown with tomatoes and cucumbers and identified the collected insects using relevant identification keys. To further explore the pest paradigm in greenhouses, we then focused on particularly studying (), a key insect species among the collected and identified insects in the studied greenhouse model and a significant pest with an impactful effect on many crops worldwide. To do so, we traced the abundance of in the tomato and cucumber grown greenhouse sectors over the period of the study, analyzed its metagenome and associated its abundance with crop yield.
Our findings revealed hosted microbes with aptitudes to either serve as symbiotic microorganisms and protect against pathogens or to potentially cause damage to crops. This work provides additional insight into the insect pests paradigm in greenhouses, an upshot that could serve integrated insect pest management strategies in greenhouses for optimal agricultural practices.
预计到2050年全球人口将增加90至100亿，随之而来的是对可持续粮食生产的需求，同时，恶劣的气候条件给全球许多国家的农业和粮食安全带来挑战，因此，采用“园艺保护栽培方法”进行季节性和非季节性作物生产的农业种植方式正在兴起，其中包括使用农业温室。温室种植的重要性体现在全年作物产量的增加、生产风险的降低、农业利润的增长以及全球许多国家粮食稳定性和安全性的提高。然而，尽管温室种植在农业中取得了公认的成功，但多年来，包括害虫存在在内的许多限制因素仍然伴随着这种种植方式，对作物质量和产量产生了重大影响。
因此，在本研究中，我们通过从种植番茄和黄瓜的不同温室区域收集昆虫，评估了温室模式中的“害虫”状况，并使用相关的鉴定方法对收集到的昆虫进行了鉴定。为了进一步探索温室中的害虫模式，我们特别关注了（），它是所研究温室模式中收集和鉴定出的昆虫中的一种关键昆虫物种，也是一种对全球许多作物有重大影响的重要害虫。为此，我们在研究期间追踪了番茄和黄瓜种植温室区域中（）的数量，分析了其宏基因组，并将其数量与作物产量相关联。
我们的研究结果表明，（）体内携带的微生物既可能作为共生微生物保护（）免受病原体侵害，但也可能对作物造成损害。这项工作为温室中的害虫模式提供了更多见解，这一结果可为温室中的综合害虫管理策略提供参考，以实现最佳农业实践。
