Calatayud, P.A., & Le Rü, B.P. 1996 Étude des relations nutritionnelles de la cochenille du manioc avec sa plant-hôte. [Study of the nutritional relationships between the cassava mealybug and its host plant].. Bulletin de la Société Zoologique de France 12(4): 391-398.

Notes: As do other Homopterous insects, Phenacoccus manihoti feeds mainly on phloem sap. The use of electrical penetration graphs -EPG-, for first time on a mealybug, shows that pre-phloem interactions between the insect mouth parts and the plant tissues are an important step for host-plant acceptation. Precocious plant rejection due to delays in phloem finding may result in global non preference phenomenon. A chemical analysis of some compounds in leaves of host and non host plants revealed that cyanide compounds and phenolic acids, as opposed to flavonoids, were mainly correlated with host recognition by P. manihoti. We tried to specify the action of allelochemical compounds present in the phloem sap. The cyanogenic glucosides (linamarin in cassava) seem to play a phagostimulatory (vs toxic) function, while rutin is likely to induce some inhibiting role in the development of the insect. Field and laboratory experiments showed the occurrence of a putative pathologic response of cassava against mealybug, which displayed significant increases in rutin levels with infestation, especially with the less favourable genotypes. This induced response clearly depended mainly on seasonal factor. It decreased in the dry season, at the end of which most population increases could be observed in field conditions.