Development of a Portable Electronic Nose for Detection of Cotton Damaged by Nezara viridula (Hemiptera: Pentatomidae)

Abstract

Stink bugs are significant pests of cotton in the southeastern USA, causing millions of dollars in control costs and crop losses each year. New methods to detect stink bug damage must be investigated in order to reduce these costs and optimize pesticide applications. One such method would be to detect the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) emitted from cotton plants damaged by stink bugs. A portable device was developed to draw VOCs from the head space of a cotton boll over carbon black-polymer composite sensors. From the response of these sensors, this device would indicate if the boll was fed upon by a stink bug or not. The device was 100% accurate in distinguishing bolls damaged by stink bugs from undamaged controls when tested under training conditions. However, the device was only 57.1% accurate in distinguishing damaged from undamaged bolls when tested 24 h after it was trained. These results indicated that this device was capable of classifying cotton as damaged or undamaged by differentiating VOCs released from undamaged or damaged bolls, but improvements in design are required to address sensitivity to fluctuations in environmental conditions.