Food Bait Attractants for Monitoring Pests in Stored Paddy

Abstract

Food baits are one of the ways for monitoring and mass trapping of stored product insects. Based on this principle, wheat, sorghum, pearl millet and rice flours, cracked corn, crushed groundnut, rice bran + rice flour were evaluated as attractive materials. Observations were recorded on 25 days after placement of bait traps. Behavioural response of insects to the baits tested showed that wheat flour, cracked sorghum and pearl millet flour were found to be the most attractive baits. Wheat flour attracted 99.47% of Sitotroga cerealella and 63.64% of Sitophilus oryzae. Cracked sorghum registered an attraction of 79.62% of Rhyzopertha dominica and 61.97% of Tribolium spp. and the pearl millet flour attracted 81.91% of Oryzaephilus surinamensis. The effective baits were also test verified through four-arm olfactometer and found the highest orientation in the arm containing wheat flour by attracting 34% of R. dominica in 15 minutes after release (MAR), 40% of Tribolium spp. at 20 MAR and 32% of S. oryzae at 15 MAR. Therefore, the effective bait of wheat flour may be exploited for monitoring and trapping of insects in paddy storage godowns.