Abstract: Orius sauteri (Poppius), an important predatory natural enemy, is widely used in the management of various greenhouse pests. The predator lays eggs into plant tissues and relies on plants for egg development, which entails the screening of suitable oviposition substrate plants (OSP) for mass rearing. Leguminous plants are green manure plants and functional plants in conservation biological control, and are potential suitable OSP for O. sauteri. The study evaluated the fitness of cowpea, kidney bean, soybean, pea, mung bean and peanut as OSP for O. sauteri in the laboratory. The results showed that the total egg numbers and net fecundity of O. sauteri were 72.0 and 59.5, respectively, when mung bean was used as OSP, which were significantly higher than those of the insects when kidney bean, soybean or peanut was used as OSP. The highest egg hatching rate (86.79%) was observed with peanut, which was not significantly different from that with mung bean. There was no significant difference in the oviposition duration of the predators on the six plants, whereas the egg hatching duration on mung bean was the shortest, significantly shorter than those on kidney bean and peanut. Taken together, mung bean is the most suitable OSP for O. sauteri among the six tested plants.

Key words: Orius sauteri, leguminous plants, oviposition substrate, functional plants, artificial rearing