EFFECTS OF PARASITOID AND HOST EGG AGE ON PARASITISM BY TRICHOGRAMMA CHILONIS (ISHII)

Muhammad  Zahid; Abid  Farid; Abdus  Sattar; Inamullah  Khan

Authors

Muhammad Zahid Nuclear Institute for Food and Agriculture (NIFA) Tarnab, P.O. Box- 446, Peshawar, Pakistan.
Abid Farid Nuclear Institute for Food and Agriculture (NIFA) Tarnab, P.O. Box- 446, Peshawar, Pakistan.
Abdus Sattar Nuclear Institute for Food and Agriculture (NIFA) Tarnab, P.O. Box- 446, Peshawar, Pakistan.
Inamullah Khan Nuclear Institute for Food and Agriculture (NIFA) Tarnab, P.O. Box- 446, Peshawar, Pakistan

Keywords:

Trichogramma chilonis, Sitotroga cerealella, parasitism, parasitoid age, host age, developmental period

Abstract

Parasitism of Sitotroga cerealella Oliv. (Lepidoptera: Gelechiidae) eggs by Trichogramma chilonisIshii (Hymenoptera: Trichogrammatidae) as influenced by host egg age and age of the femaleparasitoid was evaluated under the laboratory conditions. An experiment conducted to see the effectof host egg age on parasitism by T. chilonis did not reveal an overall treatment effect (F = 0.95).This implies that T. chilonis does not discriminate between host ages of less than one day. Thedevelopmental period of T. chilonis inside the host eggs remains almost the same in both theexperiments i.e. 11 days. A second experiment on investigating the effect of parasitoid age onparasitism showed that T. chilonis laid significantly the highest average numbers of eggs at 80.6 +1.5 and 69.4 + 6.3% during the first 8 and 24 h of its age respectively. Later, the parasitizationdecreased to 35% by the end of day 4. Thus, for the highest yield of parasitoid production, it isimportant to use younger Trichogramma for parasitization.

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