Unravelling the Role of Allelochemicals through a Plant-Insect Pest-Natural Enemy Tripartite Interaction: Implications in Sustainable Agriculture

Abstract

The importance of plant-arthropod interactions is not well studied in some aspects especially where plant derived chemical is involved. Plant-based chemical signals (allelochemicals) are one of the most influential drivers that promote plant defence before or after pest attack. Very few studies have been performed regarding signalling of plant defence with respect to crop species. The applications of deterring or natural enemy attracting sociochemical interactions are valuable in terms of sustainability approaches. We focused our review to congregate information about various insect pests and their natural enemies for some globally cultivated popular solanaceous crops. Specific search words were used through search engines to find out literatures of past 20 years regarding the semi chemicals released from common solanaceous crops. Based on our results we categorised this information into three tabulated charts where crop–pest complex, pest–natural enemy complex and pest related semi chemicals were provided. These data are crucial in building policies to promote behavioural pest control managements in agroecosystems. This review is an attempt to assemble information regarding plant chemical-based tri trophic interactions occurring in case of solanaceous crops. Hence, we would like to encourage more such works that will unfold unknown relationships with respect to other crops.