Suitability of different diets and their combination for rearing of laboratory host, Corcyra cephalonica
Sree Latha Edpuganti, Veena Y and Swathi Yadav Kattula
Corcyra cephalonica is one of the major stored grain pests which attack many products. This pest is being very widely used in the bio control laboratories to develop parasitoids and predators. The diet which is being provided to the C cephalonica is also very important as it directly affects the number of biocontrol agents that can be produced. In this experiment, three different grains and their combinations with groundnut were tested for adult emergence and egg production. Among the six treatments tested T1 (bajra + groundnut) was proved to be best in both adult emergence as well as number of eggs produced with 2868 adults and 15.8893 g of eggs. This was followed by T4 (bajra + rice + groundnut) with 2451 adults and 9.6011 g of eggs. T2 (rice +groundnut) was proved to be the least effective for the production of C cephalonica with 416 adults and 1.681 g of eggs. The adult emergence started at the earliest in T1 (bajra +groundnut), T4 (bajra +rice +groundnut) and T6 (bajra +sorghum +groundnut) after 40 days of charging. The adult emergence started very late in T2 (rice +groundnut) from 50 days after charging. This proves that the treatments which contain bajra are superior over sorghum and rice.
Sree Latha Edpuganti, Veena Y, Swathi Yadav Kattula. Suitability of different diets and their combination for rearing of laboratory host, Corcyra cephalonica. J Entomol Zool Stud 2018;6(2):2872-2876.