Abstract
The tobacco cutworm and the common armyworm have been reared successfully on the wheat bran diet to which ascorbic acid is added.
In both species, the larvae developed normally, pupated and emerged adults laid fertile egg masses when those larvae were reared on the diet with ascorbic acid. When the larvae were reared on the diet without ascorbic acid, they normally developed to older larval stage. However, in the final larval stage, the number of faecal pellets considerably decreased and the mean weights of the final larva, of prepupa and pupa were considerably smaller. No prepupae could pupate normally.
From these results, ascorbic acid in the artificial diet had slightly stimulating action for the older larvae. The effect of lacking of ascorbic acid becomes evident especially at the period of the moulting for pupation. This indicates that ascorbic acid was necessary to promote the moulting of prepupae of the tobacco cutworm and the common armyworm.
