Methods of Genetic Analysis of Insecticide Resistance

Abstract

Insecticide resistance in insects was first genetically analyzed nearly 40 years ago when Dickson (1941) reported that resistance to HCN fumigation in the California red scale, Aonidietta auveantii, was inherited as a sex-linked, incompletely dominant character. Shortly following this, Yust et al. (1943) obtained similar results. In a modern sense, however, one may say that the age of insecticide resistance actually started with the initiation of worldwide usage of synthetic chlorinated hydrocarbon insecticides.