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Section Symposium

Plant-Insect Ecosystems

APHIS PPQ Insect Rearing and Biocontrol: Celebrating the Careers of Drs. Juli Gould and Hannah Nadel

Advancements in emerald ash borer larval diet development

Tuesday, November 12, 2024
9:40 AM – 10:00 AM MST
Location: Phoenix Convention Center, 126 A, PCC
Oral Presentation
The emerald ash borer (Agrilus planipennis Fairmaire) (EAB) is a major pest of ash trees in the U.S. and Eastern Canada. A biological control program was developed by APHIS to control EAB, whereby hundreds of thousands of parasitoid wasps are reared under laboratory conditions and distributed to infested areas for release. EAB and its parasitoids are reared using ash material that is harvested from EAB-free areas. This material is costly and increasingly more difficult to locate every year. A diet was developed in 2015 to rear EAB larvae but it is not easily integrated into the mass rearing facility. The goal of this study was to increase larval survival to third and fourth instar on diet and incorporate the larval diet into the mass-rearing system. A diet was developed using a twin-screw extruder that significantly increased survival of neonates to late instar compared to the control diet, which was made using a hotplate, mixer and then hand-rolled into sheets. The extruded diet had optimal moisture and was extruded in thin sheets which reduced handling of the diet. The extruded diet-reared larval EAB were used in parasitoid exposures and successful parasitism occurred. Future studies will examine methods to incorporate the extruded diet into a mass-rearing program and exposure methods to increase parasitism of diet-reared EAB in parasitoid exposures.