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eISSN: 2083-5906
ISSN: 1230-1485
ISSN: 1230-1485
ORIGINAL RESEARCH
Occurrence of the Whitefly Bemisia tabaci
on Pepper Plants in a Greenhouse in Saudi Arabia
1
Department of Biological Sciences, College of Science, University of Jeddah, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
Submission date: 2025-10-23
Final revision date: 2025-12-20
Acceptance date: 2026-02-15
Online publication date: 2026-06-15
Corresponding author
Badriah M. K. Asiri
Department of Biological Sciences, College of Science, University of Jeddah, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
Department of Biological Sciences, College of Science, University of Jeddah, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
KEYWORDS
TOPICS
ABSTRACT
Bemisia tabaci (Gennadius), the scientific name for the whitefly, is an insect pest of economic
importance that threatens crops worldwide. This study aimed to assess the population abundance of
B. tabaci on pepper plants (Capsicum annuum) during two seasons (2022/2023 and 2023/2024) in
the Al-Qassim Region, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. We also investigated the impact of weather factors
and plant age on B. tabaci abundance using simple correlation coefficients, multiple regression, and
principal component analysis. We additionally assessed the association between essential nutrients in
pepper leaves and B. tabaci counts. Data showed that B. tabaci individuals were recorded on pepper
plants from October 6 to April 14 in each season. The variability in B. tabaci counts explained by the
multiple regression model was 84.17% and 78.48% across the two seasons, respectively. A principal
component analysis was undertaken to analyze the meteorological variables and B. tabaci counts
to evaluate the correlation between them. Over the two seasons, B. tabaci counts were negatively
correlated with potassium content in pepper leaves and positively correlated with nitrogen, phosphorus,
and carbohydrate contents.
CONFLICT OF INTEREST
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
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| eISSN: | 2083-5906 |
| ISSN: | 1230-1485 |
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