Phenolic Compounds in Foliage of Commercial Tomato Cultivars as Growth Inhibitors to the Fruitworm, Heliothis Zea1

Abstract

Semi-purifled extracts of phenolics from foliage of tomato ( Lycopersicon esculentum Mill.) inhibit larval growth of the fruitworm, Heliothis zea (Boddie), when added to artificial diets for this insect pest. The degree of inhibition of growth (dose-response) is directly related to the quantity of total phenolics in extracts added to diets, whether the extracts are of equivalent amounts of foliage from different cultivars or of foliage pooled from several cultivars added in serial dilution. Dose-responses for extracts were equal to those obtained with pure chlorogenic acid or rutin, major phenolic constituents of tomato foliage. Also, equivalent quantities of phenolics from 5 different cultivars inhibited larval growth equally when added to diets. These 3 sets of observations show that isolated tomato foliar phenolics affect H. zea larvae quantitatively, with no measurable qualitative differences between cultivars. When 2nd instar larvae were reared on excised leaflets from several cultivars of field-grown tomatoes, significant differences in larval growth between cultivars were obtained, which were consistent through two years. However, significant relationships between foliar phenolic content and larval growth were not obtained, partially because of the highly variable nature of phenolic content within and between plants. Our results suggest that phenolics in tomato foliage at the minimum contribute a substantial background level of antibiosis to H. zea.