Animal husbandry – Entomological culture device – Egg treatment – production – or storage
Patent
1981-03-06
1983-10-25
Chamblee, Hugh R.
Animal husbandry
Entomological culture device
Egg treatment, production, or storage
119 15, A01K 6700
Patent
active
044112203
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to a mass-production unit for eggs of an insect. It is known that, in the field of agriculture and more precisely the protection of plants by the biological route against damaging insects, it is possible to apply various predator or parasite Entomophages, such as Trichogramma, and that it is possible to obtain them by passing through a substitute host such as the egg of pyralis of flour (flour- moth).
The present invention therefore relates to a mass-production unit for eggs of this substitute host.
DESCRIPTION OF THE PRIOR ART
The raising of the pyralis of flour, in particular of Ephestia kuhniella, on the laboratory scale, has been described by Daumal and Collaborators (1975). In accordance with the method described, there is dispersed on the bottom of closed compartments hard wheat semolina, then a panel of corrugated cardboard including a certain number of elemental cells or alveoles. An inoculum of eggs of the meal-moth is spread on the bottom of the cover of the compartment. After hatching, the caterpillars are allowed to fall on to the cardboard, they utilize the semolina and form nymphs in the cells after a development of 45 days at a temperature between 12.degree. and 25.degree. C. This thermoperiod includes low temperatures which avoid sudden heating within development compartments as well as, consequently, epizootics. At the beginning of the appearance of the adults, the panels are brushed and then introduced into a hatcher where the adults emerge over a span of 20 to 30 days. These adult individuals are recovered daily by the pneumatic route after narcosis with carbon dioxide. They are then transferred by the same route into laying places of a transparent plastic material including rows of rods also plastics material serving as a support for the eggs laid by the adults. The eggs then fall through a grid which lies the bottom of these laying places onto a conveyer belt which leads them to a scrubber where they are freed from the moth scales with which they are associated.
This breeding method has a certain number of drawbacks among which are notably: too numerous manipulations, occupation of too large surfaces and of too large volumes, competition of the caterpillars, difficulty of checking temperatures within compartments, eggs laid by adults with considerable loss of eggs on corpses, expense of carbon dioxide, loss of cardboard pannels on each generation, etc.
The production unit according to the invention enables the drawbacks to be overcome by applying the discoveries of Applicant to the behaviour of the pyralis of flour:
(1) The pyralis caterpiller weaves constantly a territorial marking thread which agglomerates the food particles encountered in its path and it is endowed with a negative geotaxy. It perceives in particular the light indication and aerated open media (aerotaxy). In the case of a favorable medium, it forms a cocoon very precociously where the emergence site of the imago is already provided and materialised, well before nymphosis, by a hole that it forms on the side of the open or aerated medium, the layer being constitutable by a fine membrane permeable to air separating the cocoon from the open medium. This behaviour hence enables three quite reliable breeding modalities to be contemplated, according as the food is alone, situated in a housing by the caterpillar or at the side of such a housing. The first modality appears the simplest, the exit indicator being given by the meshes of a grid and the caterpillar fabricating its housing. However, the following modalities appear preferable and resort to housings combined into alveoled frames as will be explained in detail below.
(2) The meal-moth caterpillar develops more easily in vertical chambers in a semolina which has already reached a certain granulation and called "fine seeding" in the milling trade, which corresponds to an average granulometry of 346 microns. The optimum food ration is 0.2 g per caterpillar, a ration of 0.13 to 0.15 g being however very suitab
REFERENCES:
patent: 2539633 (1951-01-01), Morrill
patent: 3847113 (1974-11-01), Andreev et al.
patent: 3893420 (1975-07-01), Andreev et al.
patent: 3941089 (1976-03-01), Andreev et al.
patent: 4106438 (1978-08-01), Nelson
Daumal Jeanne
Jourdheuil Pierre E. J.
Voegele Jean D.
Chamblee Hugh R.
Flocks Karl W.
Inst. Nat. de la Recherche Agronomique
Neimark Sheridan
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