| Summary: Ricania simulans damages on many vegetables and fruits, including tea. R. simulans is widespread through China, Japan and Taiwan in the world and in East Black Sea Region of Turkey. It damages the plants by sucking the nectar. Up to now, it has been controlled by mechanical methods only. This method is not sufficient enough to control R. simulans. In order to find a more effective and safer control agent against this pest, first of all, we determined 16 bacterial isolates from R. simulans and identified these isolates based on morphological, physiological, biochemical and molecular characteristics. Based on the identification tests, bacterial isolates were identified at species level for nine and at genus level for seven. According to these results, they were identified as Pseudomonas oleovorans (Rs1), Pseudomonas parafulva (Rs2, Rs3 and Rs6), Pseudomonas sp. (Rs4, Rs8, Rs10 and Rs13), Pantoea sp. (Rs5 and Rs6), Microbacterium paraoxydans (Rs9), Bacillus sp. (Rs11), Bacillus safensis (Rs12), Chryseobacterium indoltheticum (Rs14), Bacillus thuringiensis (Rs15 and Rs16). The insecticidal activities of these isolates were performed against both nimfs and adults of R. simulans. According to test results, the highest insecticidal activity was 82% for Rs4 isolate on nimphal stage and 86% for Rs16 isolate on adult stage of R. simulans. These results indicate that Rs4 and Rs16 isolates may be valuable as potential biological control agents for the control of R. simulans. |
