Egg Parasitoid Production and Their Role in Controlling Insect Pests

Abstract

Egg parasitoids have been used successfully as inundative or augmentative biological control agents against a wide range of agricultural pests; Trichogramma and other egg parasitoids are currently the most widely produced and applied natural enemies over the world. Trichogramma evanescens as well as many species have also been deeply researched in different crops; maize, cotton, rice and sugarcane and vegetables like tomato, cabbage, pepper and potato as well as fruit orchards; apple, olive, pomegranate and grape as well as for controlling the forest and stored product insect pests. Trichogramma species have a short generation time and can be easily mass-produced and they could kill the Lepidopteran pests during the egg stage. The endogenous species is selected for release on the environmental basis that it is better adapted to the proposed climate and habitat than those are exotic parasitoids. Efficiency of the parasitoids is depended on the factitious hosts which reared on; Sitotroga cerealella, Ephestia kuehniella and Corcyra cephalonica. There are biological components in a mass rearing facility: the host and the parasitoid. To ensure high product quality and to avoid contamination with other parasitoid species, facilities usually rear only a few parasitoid strains or species at any given time. Storage of both host eggs as well as parasitized ones is a requirement to manage commercial or otherwise supply of parasitoid material in times of need. There is a need for regulatory evaluating the quality of parasitoid wasps. There are many factors affect the field release, like weather, crop, host, predation, pesticide uses, and parasitoid quality that influence the release and disappearance rate. In field applications over world, releases of several million female wasps/ha through the season proved to be very effective in suppressing the key lepidopteran pests of many crops accomplishing parasitism up to 91%. Therefore, egg parasitoids are a promising biocontrol agent for mainly Lepidopteran insects.