2013 Volume 55 Pages 89-91
In 2012, we investigated parasitism of the tea spiny whitefly, Aleurocanthus camelliae Kanmiya & Kasai, by Encarsia smithi (Silvestri) in several tea fields in Shizuoka Prefecture, 2 years after the first identification of the pest. A. camelliae, an exotic pest of the tea plant, was discovered in Shizuoka Prefecture in 2010. We used three methods to determine parasitism: examination of emerged insects, dissection of the host pupae, and identification of adult parasite exuviae. Examination of emerged insects revealed 1.5% to 97.0% parasitism among the six tea fields investigated. Parasitism determined by dissection of the host pupae and identification of adult exuviae ranged from 0% to 87.5% and from 0% to 81.4%, respectively, among the 13 fields investigated. The fields in which no parasitism was detected are the fields where the pest was first identified in 2012, whereas the fields where the pest was earlier identified in 2010 had higher parasitism than others.
