A Study on the Substance which Attracts Tyroglypid Mites (I)

On the Flavours Used in Foods

Abstract

Several kinds of flavour substances were compared for the attractive power to mites Tyrophagus dimidiatus Hermann mites, which had been fed on yeast for a long time, were used for the experiment. As for the attracting apparatus, response tube (Fig. 1) and Y-tube olfactmeter (Fig. 2) were used, and the experiment was carried out for about fifty varieties of flavour substances.
As the result, an attracting tendency was found for both acetate and ethyl esters. For the next time an experiment was carried out by changing the concentration of ethanol and acetic acid, resulting in the occurence of the attracting tendency in the range of 10-40% for ethanol and less than 0.5% for acetic acid. This result seems to coincide with the fact that mites are numerously found in the fermented foods.