Evaluation of mass-trapping for control of tea tussock moth Euproctis pseudoconspersa (Strand) (Lepidoptera: Lymantriidae) with synthetic sex pheromone in south China

Abstract

Field experiments were conducted to evaluate the effect of dosage, trap placement, trap diameter and trap colour on the trap captures of tea tussock moth, Euproctis pseudoconspersa, in a tea plantation located in Guizhou province in southern China during the 2001 field season. The optimum dosage of synthetic sex pheromone was 1.5 mg/septum in a trap. Trap captures of males were maximized with traps paced 90 cm above the ground. Traps of 32 cm in diameter caught significantly more males than those of 20 cm, and white traps caught significantly more males than traps of other colors. The control effect by mass-trapping technique on tea tussock moth was investigated in the same tea plantation in 2002 and 2003. Twenty-five traps/ha were used in the 2-year, large-scale mass-trapping experiment, and a total of 146,767 males were captured. In the pheromone-treated field, mating rates were significantly reduced on nine of 12 sample dates. Larval and egg densities were reduced by 27.87–50.85 and 38.89–51.11%, respectively, compared with the untreated field. Our results suggest that mass-trapping is promising as a control agent for use against the tea tussock moth.