Insect Pest of Stored Grain


Most insect control methods for stored grain work against all species. So you don’t need to identify the storage pests to make decisions about most control methods.
But if you intend spraying grain with insecticides you may need to know which species are present if:

•  a previous application has failed and you want to know whether resistance was the reason - if more than one species survived, resistance is unlikely to be the cause

•   you intend using a residual protectant to treat infested grain – Actellic, Fenitrothion and Reldan are ineffective against lesser grain borer, and Actellic and Fenitrothion are generally ineffective against sawtoothed grain beetle

•   you intend using dichlorvos to treat infested grain - if lesser grain borer is present you need to apply the higher dose rate.

Insecticide sprays are not registered for oilseeds and pulses, so identification of pests in those grains is not so important.

Common species

Cereal grains
 Cereal grains include wheat, barley, oats, triticale, sorghum and millets.

        
 Rice weevil

      
 Lesser Grain borrer
  

The most common insect pests of stored cereal grains in World are:

weevils (the rice weevil is the common species in wheat)
lesser grain borer
flour beetles
sawtoothed grain beetle
flat grain beetles.

Pulses

Pulses include: faba beans, chickpea, cowpea, field pea, mung bean, navy bean, soybean, pigeon pea. The most common insect pests of stored pulses are:
• bruchid beetles
• moths

Identifying the common pests

The common pests can be separated fairly easily into three groups:
• moths - moth larvae or grubs leave silken webbing on the surface of the grain, and the moths can be seen flying above the grain, particularly at dusk.
• bruchid beetles - if beetles in your stored pulses are leaving perfectly round holes where they emerge from the grains, you have bruchids
• other beetles - most of the beetle pests of stored grain are about 3 mm long, brown in colour and difficult to distinguish if you haven’t been shown how.

For Further Information



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why an Insect Molts ?

Image
Insect molts when it want to grow. Insects grow in increments; in fact, all arthropods do. Each stage of growth ends with molting, the process of shedding and replacing the rigid exoskeleton. People often think molting is the simple act of an insect breaking out of its skin and leaving it behind. In truth, it's a complex process involving hormones, proteins, and enzymes. When Molting Occurs: Insect growth occurs in the stage immediate following egg hatch. As the immature insect feeds and grows, its exoskeleton remains an inflexible container. Eventually, the larva or nymph must shed this unyielding overcoat to continue its development. Without the exoskeleton for protection and support, the insect could not survive. The old exoskeleton cannot be shed until a new one is ready underneath, a process that takes days or even weeks. The Molting Process: When there is no more room for the insect to expand inside its exoskeleton, a hormone triggers molting. The exoskeleton...
Read more

Pest Free Vegetables

Image
Knowledge is power when it comes to controlling insect pests of vegetables, and one of the key sources of knowledge is pest monitoring. Pest monitoring, or scouting, allows you to determine when pests arrive in your vegetables, which species are present and how many there are. This information in turn allows you to determine if actions need to be taken to control pests and if these prevent enough damage to offset costs of control. By analogy, an army commander that knows when an enemy will attack, what types of weapons they have and their troop strength will be able to make intelligent decisions about if, when and how countermeasures will be effective. Just like armed forces use reconnaissance to get this information, you can use monitoring to keep track of insects attacking your vegetables. For some insect pests and life stages, including onion thrips, eggs of  Colorado potato beetles , caterpillars in cole crops  and squash bugs, the easiest way to track number...
Read more

Lady Beetles are not Ladies !

Image
Coleoptera is the most diverse order of insects which include beetles. Coccinellidae is one such family consists of the beneficial beetles known as lady bird beetles. But their name dosen't indicate that these are ladies; they can be either male or female like other species. Determining sex of these beetles is not so difficult as the male is relatively short in size than female. In the case of these beatles; Often a question arise that how a specie reproduce and runs their generation if they are ladies !! There are other insects which are pathenogentic especially some are the diet of these lady bird beetles e.g. Aphids & mealybugs.  However, this is the whole different point but isn't it unreasonable to think that in a specie only female exists ? Its the name of this beetle which is creating all this confusion. So from where this name orginated ? In Middle Ages, Europeans named this as "beetle of our lady" because many pests particularly aphids, mealybugs had be...
Read more