Insects (Sep 2021)

Characterization of Thermal and Time Exposure to Improve Artificial Diet for Western Corn Rootworm Larvae

  • Man P. Huynh,
  • Adriano E. Pereira,
  • Ryan W. Geisert,
  • Michael G. Vella,
  • Thomas A. Coudron,
  • Kent S. Shelby,
  • Bruce E. Hibbard

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/insects12090783
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 12, no. 9
p. 783

Abstract

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The western corn rootworm (WCR), Diabrotica virgifera LeConte, is the most serious pest of maize in the United States. In pursuit of developing a diet free of antibiotics for WCR, we characterized effects of thermal exposure (50–141 °C) and length of exposure on quality of WCRMO-2 diet measured by life history parameters of larvae (weight, molting, and survival) reared on WCRMO-2 diet. Our results indicated that temperatures had non-linear effects on performance of WCRMO-2 diet, and no impacts were observed on the length of time exposure. The optimum temperature of diet processing was 60 °C for a duration less than 30 min. A significant decline in development was observed in larvae reared on WCRMO-2 diet pretreated above 75 °C. Exposing WCRMO-2 diet to high temperatures (110–141 °C) even if constrained for brief duration (0.9–2.3 s) caused 2-fold reduction in larval weight and significant delays in larval molting but no difference in survival for 10 days compared with the control diet prepared at 65 °C for 10 min. These findings provide insights into the effects of thermal exposure in insect diet processing.

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