A new international WG investigating and monitoring resistance in lepidopteran pest has been formed with IRAC members from a number of companies sitting on the team. A first conference call of the new WG was held in December 2009 and it was agreed that one of the first priorities would be to investigate the resistance status of the tomato leafminer, Tuta absoluta.
This is a serious endemic tomato pest in South American countries, but recently its geographical distribution has expanded to Europe, where for the first time at the end of 2006 it was found in Spain. By 2009 it had spread to several other Mediterranean countries such as Italy, Algeria, France, Greece, Tunisia, Morocco, Libya and Malta. In addition, in 2009, it was also detected for the first time in the Netherlands and Switzerland.