Five different diets (Small pieces of sugarcane stems, Sugarcane stem pieces + Sugarcane residues, Sugarcane stem pieces + Date palm trunk pieces, Sugarcane stem pieces + Grinded frond of date palm and Sugarcane stem pieces + Food residues of RPW) were tested for rearing the red palm weevil Rhynchophorus ferrugineus and to investigate the effect of diets on some biological aspects under laboratory conditions. Larval durations of different instars were affected by different diets.
The larvae fed on (Sugarcane stem pieces + Grinded frond of date palm), slowly developed to exhibit the longest duration of 103.78 days. Meanwhile, the larvae fed on the other diets showed a gradual shortage in larval periods to give means of 89.47 and 74.63 days when fed on Small pieces of sugarcane stems and Sugarcane stem pieces + Food residues of RPW, successively.
Feeding on different diets had great effect on the means of the pupal period, which were obtained between the tested diets. Longevity of males and females emerged from larvae fed on the different tested diets varied.
The sex-ratio of emerged adults was the highest (more females), when larvae were fed on sugarcane stem pieces + food residues of RPW. Mean number of eggs deposited by emerged females from larvae fed on different diets was highest in case of (Sugarcane stem pieces + Food residues of RPW). The mean of incubation period of eggs laid from adult fed on three tested diets ranged from 3.78 to 4.54 (Sugarcane stem pieces + Food residues of RPW and Sugarcane stem pieces + Grinded frond of date palm, respectively. Hatchability percentage proved to be affected by different diets. The superior diet were sugarcane stem pieces + Food residues of RPW, because of biology completed and the diet kept moisture and remained fresh all the time. |
