The effect of insecticide application by dropleg sprayers on pollen beetle parasitism in oilseed rape

Dropleg sprayers apply pesticides below the flower horizon of oilseed rape plants and thus reduce unwanted side effects on pollinating insects. Whether this technique benefits parasitoids of seed and pollen feeding insect pests has not been studied earlier. To answer this question, we first assessed the vertical distribution of pests and parasitoids using a portable aspirator. In addition, parasitism rates of pollen beetle, Brassicogethes aeneus Fabricius (Coleoptera: Nitidulidae), by the larval parasitoid Tersilochus heterocerus Thomson (Hymenoptera: Ichneumonidae) were compared in conventional and dropleg sprayed fields over four years (2016–2019), using the neonicotinoids thiacloprid and acetamiprid. Our results show that seed and pollen feeders were mainly found in the flowering canopy, while the predominant location of parasitoids was species-specific. Among pollen beetle parasitoids, Phradis interstitialis Thomson (Hymenoptera: Ichneumonidae) was more abundant below flowering canopy (63% of total catch), whereas T. heterocerus was mainly caught in the flowering canopy (84% of total catch). In the spraying experiments, average parasitism rates of pollen beetles by T. heterocerus ranged between 55 and 82% in the untreated controls. In the dropleg spray treatments, parasitism rates did not differ significantly from control levels, with the exception of thiacloprid application in 2019. In contrast, conventional spray applications resulted in a reduction of parasitism rates by up to 37% compared to the control for at least one of the insecticides in three out of four years. The impact of conventional application differed between years, which may be explained by the temporal coincidence between spray application and the immigration of parasitoids into the crop. We conclude that dropleg spraying exerts lower non-target effects on the main biological control agent of pollen beetle.