Efficacy of pheromones for managing of the Mediterranean flour moth, Ephestia kuehniella Zeller, in food and feed processing facilities

Abstract

In recent years, considerable progress has been made in the monitoring and control of Lepidoptera, by pheromones also used in mass-trapping, attracticide (lure and kill), mating-disruption, auto-confusion methods. In context of IPM "insectistasis" can be readily achieved by continual supervision of environments by traps in combination with a limited number of preventive and curative measures appropriately timed. In the present paper are reported some promising results offering efficient control of the Mediterranean flour moth, Ephestia kuehniella Zeller, populations in food and feed processing facilities based on pheromones and line up a number of remaining questions to be answered to improve the reliability and competitiveness of the methods used. These field researches show potential for successful pheromone-based suppression methods for Mediterranean flour moths in practical applications.

Keywords

• mediterranean flour moth
• ephestia kuehniella
• pheromones
• monitoring
• mass-trapping
• attracticide method
• mating-disruption