Monitoring and Volatile Profiling of Fruit Crops as Host Plants of the Polyphagous Brown Marmorated Stink Bug Halyomorpha halys (Stål, 1855)

Volatile organic substances (VOCs) emitted by plants play an important role in the recognition and selection of host plants by insects. For polyphagous insects with a broad host range, like the brown marmorated stink bug Halyomorpha halys, not much is known about the plant volatiles that influence host choice. In order to determine which odour stimuli could influence host selection, monitoring was carried out using pheromone traps in orchards with various host plants. The headspace of the phenological stages of plants on which H. halys occurred in large numbers was sampled and analysed with gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry (GC-MS). The volatile profiles of the different host plants varied significantly. Some compounds occurred in high relative proportions across all taxa. Those compounds were tested by H. halys using electroantennography. H. halys’ antennae responded significantly to all of the selected compounds. In a Y-tube olfactometer, H. halys showed a significant attraction to 1 µg hexanal, 100 µg (E)-4,8-dimethyl-1,3,7-nonatriene (DMNT), and a volatile mixture. Due to the limited sustainable strategies for plant protection against this polyphagous insect, adding attractive plant volatiles to lures could improve the effectiveness of alternative volatile-based plant protection strategies, such as traps or capsules, or promote their development.