evansi attacking tomato ( Humber et al., 1981 and Duarte et al., 2009). This fungus develops inside spider mites as hyphal bodies, kills its hosts, sporulates and produces primary

conidia on conidiophores on the outside of the dead mite check details when conditions are favorable. Primary conidia are actively ejected from swollen brown desiccated cadavers, referred to as mummies. These conidia germinate to form the infective and more persistent capilliconidia that infects new mites ( Carner, 1976, Elliot, 1998 and Delalibera et al., 2006). It only takes one attached capilliconidium to produce a lethal infection ( Oduor et al., 1997), and capilliconidia attached to the mite body indicate a strong infection potential and hence click here a good estimate for the infection level ( Delalibera et al., 2000). Abiotic factors such as relative humidity, temperature, photoperiod and light intensity have been proven to affect production, germination and viability of fungal conidia of N. floridana ( Carner, 1976, Klingen and Nilsen, 2009, Castro et al., 2010, Wekesa et al., 2010a and Wekesa et al., 2010b). Also the use of pesticides are known

to affect this beneficial fungus ( Klingen and Westrum, 2007 and Wekesa et al., 2008). Although several factors are known to influence N. floridana, the role of host plants and their impact on the development of epizootics are largely unknown. In order to maximize the potential of fungal pathogens in the management of spider mites, it is therefore necessary to understand the effects of host plants on fungal efficacy. Phytochemical differences among host plants can determine their suitability to arthropod herbivores and susceptibility to entomopathogens which increases as host plant suitability decreases (Felton and Dahlman, 1984, Richter et al., 1987 and Hare, 1992). Insect- and mite pathogenic fungi are known to be affected 3-mercaptopyruvate sulfurtransferase by the arthropod host plants through tritrophic-level interactions (Hajek and St. Leger, 1994). Hare (1992) suggested that pest control strategies that seek to decrease the suitability of crop plants for the growth and development of arthropod herbivores

should ensure compatibility with entomopathogens as the two strategies of pest control should be additive or synergistic. Several studies have established that host plants can alter susceptibility of arthropod pests to microbial pathogens and result to variation in efficacy for the pathogens used in their control (Hare and Andreadis, 1983, Ramoska and Todd, 1985, Benz, 1987 and Costa and Gaugler, 1989a). However, some studies showed no effect of host plants on susceptibility of invertebrate hosts to fungal pathogens (Costa and Gaugler, 1989a and Vidal et al., 1998) and these differences in results from various fungal-invertebrate-host plant systems shows that there is a need for more studies for possible effects on the variation of host plants on spider mites.