Bean bug, Riptortus pedestris is an agriculturally serious pest in East Asian countries, reducing the value of crop quality and loss of income in agribusiness. Chemical pesticides have contributed to the management of the pest, but nowadays insect resistance limits the use of chemical pesticides, thus alternatively new pesticides with different mode of actions such as entomopathogenic fungi are considered. Beauveria bassiana and Metarhizium anisopliae JEF isolates were collected, identified and assayed against bean bugs in laboratory conditions. Some isolates showed >80% virulence by spray and contact-exposure methods. The isolates produced high levels of pathogenesis-related enzymes, such as chitinase, Pr1 protease and lipase. The Agrobacterium tumefaciens-mediated transformation generated random transformants and some mutants had reduced virulence against bean bugs, which provided some materials to figure out pathogenicity-related genes in the fungi. Now characterization of flanking region of the integrated fragment is underway and this work may reveal some important genes in the pathogenesis. This work can be a strong platform for the functional genetics of bean bug-pathogenic B. bassiana.

In the current research, the insect pathogenic fungus, Is aria fumosorosea was assessed for its pathogenecity against adults of different aphid species of wheat and Brassica crop i.e. Schizaphis graminum, Rhopalosiphum padi, Brevicoryne brassicae and Lipaphis erysimi. I. fumosorosea (IF-01) was found effective at all concentrations i.e. 1x106, 1x107 and 1x108 spores/ml on all aphid species, but the uppermost concentration (lx108 spores/ml) provided maximum control within short period of time (P < 0.05). The results showed that the effect of I. fumosorosea on different aphid species was dose and time dependent. I. fumosorosea with LC50 value of 9.02 x 105 proved to be lethal to L. erysimi after 3rd day. Mortality of B. brassicae was observed maximum on highest concentration of 1x108 spores/ml with LC50 value of 1.64 x 107 , while the LT50 values were in range of 1.78-4.53 days for different aphid species treated at various concentrations. By checking the field efficacy of I. fumosorosea against aphid species, this entomopathogenic fungus can be used as possible biological control agent for suppressing aphids.