Chilli thrips
A tiny, pale yellow thrips about 1/25–1/16 inch (1–1.6 mm) long, native to southern and eastern Asia. It has been established in Florida since 2005 and UF/IFAS reports serious damage in Florida and Texas. It feeds on the newest growth, buds and fruit of hundreds of plants, roses and peppers above all. The leaves bronze, curl and drop, and shoots die back. Pyrethroid sprays do not control it. Spinosad, insect-killing fungi and predatory mites under glass give the best documented results.
Bronzed, distorted new growth on a shrub rose infested with Scirtothrips dorsalis. Photo: pending.
Identification
Adults are about 1/25 inch (1 mm) long by UF/IFAS, about 1.2 mm in the UF/IFAS Featured Creatures profile, or 1/16 inch by NC State, with a pale yellow to cream body. The wings are dark and fringed, and a row of dark marks runs down the back of the abdomen. NC State adds dark grey eyes and smoky grey antennae. Larvae are whitish, wingless and have red eyes. A hand lens will show them. Naming the species for certain needs a specialist with a microscope, and sometimes molecular tests.
Where it feeds is the clue. Chilli thrips favour the youngest leaves, shoot tips, buds and small fruit, and feed on leaf undersides. Flower thrips such as Frankliniella tritici mainly damage the flowers themselves. In a south Florida study on Knock Out roses and buttonwood, chilli thrips made up 95% of the thrips found on the plants. On the roses, buds and shoot tips held more of them than leaves did.
Easily confused with
- Flower thripsAlso a pestChilli thrips are pale cream to yellow rather than amber, with dark spots down the back of the abdomen and smoky grey antennae. Sources differ on whether they are smaller.
- Minute pirate bug nymphsBeneficial — leave itPirate bug nymphs are wingless, teardrop-shaped and yellow-orange to brown, darkening with each moult, and under about 1/8 in (3 mm) long.
Damage symptoms
Feeding kills the surface cells of new growth. Hot, dry weather makes it worse, and UF/IFAS says heavy infestations then curl leaves, strip plants and cause general decline. On roses, the more thrips there were, the higher the damage rating, and damaged plants carried fewer and smaller flowers.
- Bronzed or silvered new leaves
- Young leaves that curl upward, distort and stay small
- Shoot tips that die back; leaves that drop early
- Buds that are scarred or discoloured; fewer, smaller rose flowers
- Scarred, corky or misshapen fruit, such as peppers
Lifecycle & degree days
Egg to adult takes about 11–20 days, depending on host and temperature: laboratory studies give 11–13 days, extension sources 15–20. Females lay their eggs inside young plant tissue, and they can reproduce without mating as well as sexually. Generations overlap, with up to 25 a year by Koppert's figure, so eggs, larvae and adults are present together. In south Florida, numbers peaked in late spring, summer and autumn and stayed low in late winter and early spring. NC State reports it in North Carolina late in the season, carried on weather fronts, but thinks it cannot survive the winter there.
- Egg to adult
- About 11–20 days
- Generations / yr
- Up to 25, overlapping
- Eggs / female
- About 60 (UF/IFAS); up to 100 (Koppert)
- Doubling time
- 8–9 days (Florida study)
Host crops
NC State says chilli thrips attack hundreds of plants in more than 40 families. It names roses and peppers as favourites. UF/IFAS lists roses, citrus, plumbago, Indian hawthorn and peppers as common garden hosts. It has become a major pest of Florida strawberries and a growing one in blueberries. In a comparison of six hosts, Chinese rose supported the most egg-laying and cucumber the least. The pest is regulated as a quarantine pest in the EU.
Monitoring & action thresholds
No extension source gives a numeric threshold for roses or garden peppers. Because numbers can double in about eight days, the practical rule is to act on the first bronzed or curled shoot tips. Yellow sticky cards worked well for monitoring in the Florida rose study.
Check the newest shoots, buds and flowers weekly from spring, and more often in hot, dry spells. Tap them over white paper, or look at the undersides of young leaves with a hand lens. Yellow sticky cards catch the adults. A Florida study recommends combining card catches with signs such as leaf distortion, small flowers and thrips clustered on buds and shoot tips.
Biological control
Wild minute pirate bugs, big-eyed bugs and predatory mites feed on chilli thrips in the open, but a Florida strawberry study found the wild predators in low numbers. For release, the evidence comes from greenhouse and laboratory work. The Swirski mite eats the larvae readily, but its results in the field have been variable. Pirate bugs eat more as adults than as nymphs. In greenhouse trials on pepper, insect-killing fungi performed almost as well as spinosad; on Knock Out roses in hot sun, all did less well (spinosad 91%, Metarhizium 81%, Beauveria 62%). An older UF/IFAS profile reports Beauveria alone as ineffective, so sources differ on it. Florida research also found that several common sprays, spinetoram above all, harm the predatory mites, while the fungus Cordyceps javanica did them least harm.
Cultural controls
Chilli thrips arrive on plants and on the wind. Clean stock and early detection do more than any single spray.
- Inspect new roses and peppers before you plant or buy — look at the shoot tips and buds
- Scout weekly in warm weather and prune out badly bronzed, curled tips
- Remove weeds and other nearby host plants that keep the population going
- Keep beneficial insects about: avoid pyrethroids, which do not control chilli thrips anyway
Chemical, last resort
- SpinosadREI 4 h
- Beauveria bassianaREI 4 h
- Neem oilREI 4 h
- Horticultural oil (narrow-range)REI 4 h
Sources
UF/IFAS Gardening Solutions, Chilli Thrips
UF/IFAS EDIS EENY463, Chilli thrips (Kumar, Seal & Kakkar)
NC State Extension, Chilli Thrips (J. Baker; 2019, rev. 2024)
Koppert, Chilli thrips (Scirtothrips dorsalis) pest page
Mannion et al. 2014, Environ. Entomol. 43:849–58 (chilli thrips on roses, south Florida)
Seal et al. 2010, Environ. Entomol. 39:1389–98; Cao et al. 2024, J. Econ. Entomol. 117:1439–46
Arthurs, Aristizábal & Avery 2013, J. Insect Sci. 13:31 (fungi against chilli thrips)
Schoeller et al. 2020, Exp. Appl. Acarol. 82:309–18; Lahiri et al. 2024, J. Econ. Entomol. 117:1623–27
Busuulwa et al. 2024, J. Econ. Entomol. (insecticide residues and predatory mites)
UC IPM Floriculture Thrips guideline (01/2022) and Relative Toxicities table (01/2022)
Adhikary et al. 2025, Insects (Orius vs chilli thrips); Adhikari et al. 2025, Insects (blueberry)
UF/IFAS EDIS EENY-665, Insidious flower bug, Orius insidiosus
Page status
Drafted from the sources below, then checked claim by claim against those sources on 23 September 2026.
Suggest a correction →Chilli thrips by crop
The same pest behaves differently on different hosts. Each page below gives the host-specific control, rate and threshold.