【Background】 The sweetpotato whitefly, Bemisia tabaci, is a globally distributed pest, which has caused serious damage to a wide range of crops in China. Due to its rapid increase of chemical resistance, the development of nonchemical control measures of B.tabaci is the key strategy in the future. We examined the effect on B.tabaci of jasmonic acid (JA) , a ubiquitous regulator of herbivore induced wound responses, that can induce several direct and indirect defence responses, and thus can block the development, survival and ability to damage of insect pest including whitefly. 【Method】 Tomato Solanum lycopersicum plant, one of the preferred host plants of B.tabaci were induced by jasmonic acid (JA) on shoot and root under laboratory conditions, and the effects of JA induction on the development, survival and reproduction of B.tabaci were investigated. 【Result】 Among shoot JAinduced (SJA), root JAinduced (RJA) and control (CON) plants, the longest developmental period of B.tabaci immatures was found on SJA plants with 27.3 days, which was significantly longer than those on CON (25.8 days) or RJA plants (25.7 days). The lowest survivorship of B.tabaci immatures was 47.17% on SJA plants, followed by that on CON plants (55.57%), and both of them were significantly lower than that on RJA (81.13%). The average longevity of B.tabaci adults on the CON, RJA and SJA plants were 25.1, 23.6, 18.7 days, respectively, and the average longevities on SJA and CON plants were remarkedly different from each other. Moreover, the averaged fecundity of B.tabaci was 132.8 eggs per female from CON plants, while on RJA and SJA plants, fecundity were 118.1 and 107.9 eggs per female; these differences were significant between CON and SJA plants. 【Conclusion and significance】 Our results indicated that the induction of JA on plants may have different effects on the development，survival and reproduction of a pest, profoundly modified by the plant organs where the JA treatment was applied.