Mustard pests in Ukraine and the world: an extended overview

Abstract

Mustard is of great economic importance as an oilseed crop. Four types of mustard are grown in the world: white, or English, gray, or Sarepta, black, or French, and Abyssinian, or Krambé. The world area occupied by mustard is about 3.0 million hectares. The vital activity of the harmful mustard entomological complex reduces the potential yield by 30–40% or more. The purpose of the article is to conduct a critical analysis of domestic and foreign scientific literature sources on the harmful entomofauna of mustard agrocenoses. In order to establish the dominant species of mustard pests that may have economic significance, the authors analyzed more than 50 domestic and foreign literary sources on the structure of the entomocomplex of oilseed cabbage agrocenoses. From the conducted critical analysis of scientific literature, we can see that in all countries where mustard is grown, a fairly diverse species composition of harmful insects can be observed. More than 50 species of pests have been described in Ukraine. The dominant ones are cruciferous fleas, rapeseed mealybugs, cruciferous bugs, cabbage stem cryptic beetles, rapeseed sawfly and cabbage aphids. In Europe, the species composition of mustard pests is quite diverse. In Europe, the species composition of mustard pests is quite diverse, numbering about 100 species. The most harmful species include cruciferous fleas, cryptic beetles, rapeseed mealybugs. In Central Asia, mustard is damaged by more than 80 species of pests. The most dangerous are cruciferous fleas, rapeseed sawfly, cabbage moth, mustard whitefly, mustard leafhopper, alfalfa and beet bugs. The entomological complex of oilseed rape crops in China includes 39 species of phytophagous insects, and in Mongolia – 25 species. In North America, the most economically important species are the mustard whitefly and the cabbage moth.