Resistance to pyrethroid and organophosphate insecticides has been a growing problem in the management of cotton bollworm Helicoverpa armigera (Hübner) populations in the Yangtze River and Yellow River valleys of China, but resistance status and mechanisms of H. armigera populations from northeast China are less documented. In this study, a field strain collected from Shenyang in northeast China (SYR) is up to 16-fold more resistant than a susceptible strain (SS) to λ-cyhalothrin, while the resistance level to phoxim remained low (2.6-fold). Synergist tests and enzymatic assays show that increased cytochrome P450 monooxygenase (P450) activity is the main mechanism for λ-cyhalothrin resistance. Eight out of 10 genes from CYP6 and CYP9 subfamilies were significantly overexpressed in the SYR strain, and CYP6AE11 was the mostly overexpressed P450 (59-fold). These results suggest that overexpression of multiple P450 enzymes contributes to λ-cyhalothrin resistance in the SYR strain of H. armigera from northeast China.
Keywords: Helicoverpa armigera; cytochrome P450; northeast China; pyrethroid resistance; λ-cyhalothrin.