Guia de identificação de lagartas desfolhadoras da cultura da soja

Abstract

Brazil is the largest soybean producer in the world, but in order to achieve these production figures, soybean producers face challenges that negatively affect crop yields. One of the main problems is insect pests, such as the caterpillar complex (Anticarsia gemmatalis, Chrysodeixis spp., Spodoptera spp. and the Heliothinae group), which are pests that affect the soybean crop and cause major economic damage to soybean growers. In an effort to ensure that the control of pest arthropods is both economically efficient and environmentally responsible, IPM - integrated pest management - has emerged, with the aim of ensuring that pest populations are kept below the point where they can cause significant damage to the economy. Within IPM, diagnosis is the most important part because it is at this stage that pests and their natural enemies must be identified correctly and simply. However, the process of identifying insects is extremely laborious due to the complexity associated with the great biodiversity and size of insects. In this sense, given the difficulty of identifying insects for correct, sustainable and economically viable management, the aim was to create a guide to recognizing the main defoliating caterpillars that occur in soybean crops. To create the guide, a literature review was carried out in technical books and scientific articles, and scientific journals. The main defoliator caterpillars were then surveyed and images of these caterpillars were found and organized into a guide to make it easier to see the differences between each one. Thus, it is worth emphasizing that correctly identifying caterpillars is an essential step in establishing an economical and efficient control strategy and that due to the difficulty in differentiating these organisms, the identification guide is essential in this task, as it facilitates the day-today work of professionals in the field.