Mortality of Mango Weevils in Mangoes Treated by Dielectric Heating13

Abstract

Mangoes, Mangifera indica L., cannot be shipped from Hawaii to the mainland United States because they are infested by the mango weevil, Sternochetus mangiferae (F.), and by other pests. Presently, fumigation with ethylene dibromide and vapor-heat can be used as quarantine treatments against such insects as the Mexican fruit fly, Anastrepha ludens (Loew) (Balock and Starr 1945, McPhail et al. 1963, Shaw and Lopez-D. 1954), but no quarantine treatments are available against mango weevils. They are difficult to kill by fumigation because they are situated in the seed (Balock and Kozuma 1964), and the same difficulty would probably occur with vapor-heat (no data are available). However, vapor-heat might also injure the flesh of the varieties of mango grown in Hawaii.