Egg production and life cycle of Sitotroga cerealella (Lepidoptera : Gelechiidae)‎ reared on three cereals

Abstract EN

The effect of three cereal hosts, wheat, sorghum and corn, on the egg production by Sitotroga cerealella (Oliver) (Lepidoptera: Gelechiidae) under mass rearing condition was examined.

The rearing of moths on sorghum yielded significantly larger amount of eggs (21.45 ± 0.004 g) than the eggs produced by wheat and corn reared moths (12.17 ± 0.004 g), which was also significantly larger than the amount of eggs produced by the moths and (3.79 ± 0.008 g), respectively.

These amounts of eggs were produced by the moths over a period of 60 day.

The chemical analysis of different cereals revealed that no one cereal was richer than another in all nutrients.

The three cereals did not substantially differ in their water content.

The fat content of corn was like that of sorghum, but both were significantly higher than the fat content of wheat.

While corn had the highest carbohydrate content, it had the lowest protein content among the three cereals.

Wheat had significantly higher content of protein than did sorghum or corn, but had intermediate carbohydrate content between corn and sorghum.

Therefore, none of the obtained results regarding larval development, fecundity or body weight could be attributed to the concentration of a single category of nutrients in the three cereals used for the rearing of insects.