Mating disruption (MD) is a powerful and sustainable control strategy against different types of mainly Lepidoptera agricultural pests. Since the first large scale trials on oriental fruit moth in Australia (1975), it is used for now more than 30 years against several pest insects, with very good efficiency against tortricid pests (orchards and grapes). This technique is growing up in french viticulture, with ca. 80,000 ha in 2018 (increase 3 times fold in 7 years). This technique of control is based on mating inhibition and is the result of different physiological and fine behavioral mechanisms (e.g zigzagging flight, counterturning when leaving the odor plume, etc…). It is a valuable and promising technique in the reduction of insecticide use. This semiochemical (pheromone) based technique targets the sexual behavior of pests by inhibiting sex partners meeting and thus mating. It is thus pheromone concentration dependent in the air , and most of the time the best results are obtained with a high and stable concentration cloud above the crop. Reversely, failures in efficiency often relies on bad or uncontrolled diffusion of the pheromone in the air. Here we present the basis of MD and our Sys Num research project on designing pheromone sensor for improving the pheromone diffusion and thus mating disruption against the fruit tortricid moths. (see the following talk by Petra Ivaskovic). This talk is presented within the Lab. Cluster 'SysNum' which objective is to to improve data collect in the environment via sensors and mathematical spatial modeling of the pheromonal ‘cloud’ above the crop.< Leer menos