Stored Grain Preference of the Red Flour Beetle Tribolium castaneum (Tenebrionidae: Coleoptera)

Awadalla,, S. S.; Hashem, A. S.; Abdel-Hady, Amira A. A.; Elsayed, Eman S.

doi:10.21608/jppp.2023.227640.1168

Stored Grain Preference of the Red Flour Beetle Tribolium castaneum (Tenebrionidae: Coleoptera)

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

¹ Entomology Department, Faculty of Agriculture, Mansoura University, Mansoura, Egypt

² Stored Product Pests Research Department, Plant Protection Research Institute, Agricultural Research Center, Sakha, Kafr El-Sheikh

10.21608/jppp.2023.227640.1168

Abstract

The life history, development time, survival rate and other activity parameters of Tribolium castaneum (Herbst) (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae) were studied on five flour commodities at 30 ± 1°C, 75 ± 5% RH and 12L:12D photoperiod in two separate experiments (choice and non-choice assays). The larval stage exhibited the shortest duration on wheat grains (11.7±0.3 days) followed by rice (15.6 ± 0.16 days) and barely (16.3 ± 0.26 days), where-as the longest duration was on corn (20.6±0.40 days) followed by oat (19.5±0.43 days). Moreover, the highest larval survival rates were on wheat and barley, and the one was on oat grains. Furthermore, the highest weight loss was on barely (8.8 %) followed by wheat (8.4%) and corn grains (7.2%). Adult longevity was the longest on oat and wheat grains with an average of 235.2 ± 5.15 and 234.3 ±5.16 days, respectively. The choice test experiment revealed that the number of attracted individuals, the number of deposited eggs, the number of emerged progeny and the percentage of the weight loss were the highest on wheat and barley grains. The findings of this study could be applied to maintain the quality of stored grains and processed grains food by-products, as well as to further investigate the connections between kernel hardness and sensitivity to stored product insects.

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