Demography and mass-rearing of Carposina sasakii Matsumura (Lepidoptera: Carposinidae) reared on Golden Delicious and Red Fuji apples in the laboratory

Abstract

Abstract Carposina sasakii Matsumura (Lepidoptera: Carposinidae), is one of the most serious fruit-boring pests in over ten species of fruit trees, and is especially damaging apples in the northern of China. The application of new planting systems, i.e., high-density and dwarfing rootstock orchard systems with mixed apple varieties, makes it important to study the fitness of C. sasakii on these apple varieties to gain fundamental knowledge for use in pest management involving this insect. In this study, life table data of C. sasakii were collected using Golden Delicious and Red Fuji apples as hosts. The egg-larva duration of male C. sasakii reared on Golden Delicious apples (22.81 d) was significantly shorter than that reared on Red Fuji apples (24.27 d). The egg-larva mortality in Golden Delicious apples (59.00%) was lower than that in Red Fuji apples (72.49%). The mortality of the pupal stage, however, was higher in Golden Delicious (10.51%) than in Red Fuji (0%). The total oviposition period (TPOP) on Golden Delicious apples (32.94 d) was significantly shorter than in individuals reared on Red Fuji apples (34.19 d). The intrinsic rate of increase (r = 0.0581 d−1), net reproductive rate (R0 = 7.57 offspring), and finite rate of increase (λ = 1.0598 d−1) were all higher on Golden Delicious than those on Red Fuji. When the net reproductive rate (R0) was used, the harvest rate of pupae was higher (0.8678) when reared on Golden Delicious apples than when reared on Red Fuji apples (0.8398). When a large cohort size (n = 200) was used for effective bootstrap sample, the PE values for C. sasakii reared on Golden Delicious apples and Red Fuji apples were both almost equal to 1. For C. sasakii culturing purposes, Golden Delicious apples would be more productive than Red Fuji.