Joy Mbaya Turaki
The experiment simulated field-to-store, cross- and re- infestations in storage by C. maculatus using 2 - 10 egg- and adult- infestation sources and effectively (91.9 - 94.5%) predicted storage losses. The study lasted one generation of pest development cycle, spanning 42 days. Result expressed significant (P<0.01) difference in both pest population build-up and cowpea weight loss, among the egg- and adult source treatments. Thus, adult-source infestation treatments generated 177.8 - 426.8 eggs and 98.8 - 185.0 emerged beetles at success rate of 37.2 - 56.1% with concomitant seed weight loss of 28.2 - 52.9%, which significantly increased at higher infestation densities. In contrast, egg-source infestation had relatively higher F1-progeny success rate (50.0 - 90.0%), however, the F1-beetle yield (1.8 - 7.3), oviposited eggs (34.0 - 245.3) and seed weight loss (0.4 - 1.8%) were comparably low. Beetle population build-up increased significantly (P<0.01) at the rate of 26.60 - 44.60 beetles per week among adultsource treatments compared to 0.35 - 1.75 beetles in the egg-source. In conclusion, C. maculatus displayed the capacity to initiate infestation from both egg- and adult- sources; however, results clearly portrayed higher pest population growth and seed weight loss from adult- than egg- source infestations.
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