Green Peach Aphid

• GeneralIt carries over 100 plant viruses: one of the costliest agricultural pests there is.
• It is probably the insect with the most documented insecticide resistance mechanisms: it has developed resistance to almost every chemical family used against it, sometimes stacking several at once.
• Its colonies are clones: a single female can give rise in one season to millions of genetically identical descendants.
• It feeds on more than 400 plant species from forty different families, an extraordinary range for an aphid.
• The greater damage is not the feeding but what it carries: it is a vector of more than a hundred plant viruses, affecting potato, beet, lettuce, cauliflower, turnip, cucumber and watermelon, among others.
• It has developed resistance to more than seventy insecticides from widely differing chemical groups: carbamates, neonicotinoids, organophosphates and pyrethroids.
• Glasshouses act as a reservoir: when infested plants are moved out into the field, they carry not only aphids but resistance as well.
• Wind and storms carry it long distances.

Skeleton type

Invertebrate - chitin exoskeleton (insect)

Habitat and environment

Vegetable crops, fruit trees and glasshouses

Size at birth

Elliptical egg 0.6 by 0.3 mm, yellow or green when laid and black before hatching

Gestation / incubation

The full cycle closes in 10-12 days, with up to 30 generations a year in mild climates

Litter / clutch size

In summer the female gives birth to live nymphs by parthenogenesis, with no need of a male; the sexual generation in autumn lays overwintering eggs on Prunus, mainly peach

Sources consulted: Wikipedia (es): Myzus persicae · LSU AgCenter, ficha Green peach aphid · University of Florida · ScienceDirect (Hughes 1989) · Science Advances, How colonial animals evolve · Wikipedia, Zooid · University of Florida, ficha Green peach aphid · NC State Extension · Ficha de identificacion de Myzus persicae · ResearchGate, manejo integrado de Myzus persicae · LSU AgCenter

Best time: It overwinters as an egg on peach and other Prunus; in spring the nymphs colonise shoots and flowers and in summer the winged forms migrate to herbaceous hosts of more than 40 families