Use of irradiation as quarantine treatment for agricultural products infested by mites and insects

Abstract

The criterion for efficacy of irradiation of agricultural products as a quarantine treatment should be based on the inability to perpetuate the pest at a new location rather than in causing immediate mortality. Sterility in insects and mites is achieved following irradiation of adults and immatures at much lower doses than needed to kill these pests. Irradiation of beans infested by the bean weevil, Acanthoscelides obtectus Say, and grains infested by the grain weevil, Sitophilus granarius (L.), and/or the rice weevil, S . oryzae (L.), at 60 Gy could be the treatment required to produce an acceptable level of quarantine security. For the acarid mites ( Acaridae ), a dose of 250 Gy is suggested. At these dosages, adult survivors of the pest will be present in the treated commodities, but they will not give rise to offspring, and thus this pest would not be able to perpetuate in a new area.