ARS | Publication request: MONITORING INDIANMEAL MOTH INSIDE AND OUTSIDE

Submitted to: Popular Publication
Publication Type: Research Notes
Publication Acceptance Date: September 1, 2005
Publication Date: October 1, 2005
Citation: Campbell, J.F., Toews, M.D. 2005. Monitoring Indianmeal moth inside and outside. AIB Quarterly, Quality Assurance and Food Safety, Fall, 2005.

Technical Abstract: An important component of a comprehensive pest management program is to identify the sources of insect infestation and eliminate them in order to prevent product infestation. A particularly challenging aspect of this problem is that many stored-product pests are highly mobile and the sources of the pests may be outside the facility. This has profound implication, for the implementation and interpretation of monitoring programs and the targeting of pest management tactics. Indianmeal moth is an important pest of the food industry worldwide and the larvae infest a wide range of foods. While adults are short-lived, they are strong flyers and can be highly mobile. At the USDA ARS Grain Marketing and Production Research Center located in Manhattan, Kansas, we are conducting research to investigate population dispersion and movement patterns of stored-product insects at food processing and storage facilities. In this short review article, we will briefly discuss, using Indianmeal moth (Plodia interpunctella) as an example, the potential connection between infestation inside food plants and outdoor populations, methods for evaluating this phenomenon, and some of the implications for managing stored-product insect pests.