Abstract
For practical application of synthetic sex pheromone to control Spodoptera litura, it is needed to develop a trap useful for monitoring and mass-trapping.The trap reported in this paper was a box (30 cm×25 cm×8 cm) made of polyvinyl chloride plates. The trap had two ducts (section : 3 cm×3 cm) the openings of which were attached to the perforated end walls. On the shunt end of the duct, a valve made of perforated thin plastic plate was hung to lead the males inside and to prevent their escape. The results of greenhouse tests demonstrated that the most suitable weight of the valve was 0.7 g for efficient trapping and that the optimum width of the slit between the bottom of the duct and the end of the valve was 6 mm. The captured males were killed rapidly in the trap by the heat of the sun. The desiccated dead bodies in the trap did not influence the trapping efficiency. Each trap caught about 2000 wild males from June to November in field tests.
