Mapping volatiles that induce sensory responses in Delia antiqua: comparative identification across a set of crops

Abstract: The urge to combat climate change and the rapid degradation of agroecosystems puts high pressure on the development of novel tools to make an applied and theoretical change in the world. There is a vision on sustainability through Agenda 2030 which aligns with FAOs: the 10 elements of agroecology. Higher degrees of cooperation and collaboration for data-sharing, open access and open information could prove pivotal to solving some of said problems. Pest management is one source of the degradation of biodiversity and decline in health of both workers and the agroecosystems. Novel tools for the management of pests are necessary to reduce the impact of these degradations as the current practices and methods are unsustainable. Chemical ecology is a field of study which means to explore alternatives to the current pest management practices and the development of novel tools. Through the use of high-throughput systems it is possible to map volatilomes and identify volatile organic compounds which attract certain insect pests and make species specific lures to be utilised in novel tools for management of insect pests. One such pest is Delia antiqua, the onion fly. Through GC-MS and GC-EAD a set of certain sulphuric compounds in yellow onion could be identified that elicited strong electrophysiological responses in D. antiqua. Meanwhile, did Drosophila melanogaster show no response to sulphuric compounds, indicating niche-driven or phylogenetic olfactory divergence between the species. Further, the analyses of olfactory responses utilised existing open- and closed-access databases and R packages, which underlines the importance of collaboration in developing and utilising such tools to accelerate the read from research to impact. To develop species specific lure-traps more comparative research is needed across various insect species as well as host crops and it has to be done in a transparent and cooperative nature.