The seasonal population fluctuations of pomegranate fruit moth, Ectomyelois ceratoniae Zeller and quince moth, Euzophera bigella Zeller in pomegranate orchards

Subject Areas : entomology and othea arthropods

N. Naserian ¹ , H. Farazmand ² , R. Vafaei Shoushtari ³ , A. Avand-Faghih ⁴ , N. Azadbakht ⁵

1 - Department of Entomology, College of Agriculture, Islamic Azad University, Arak Branch, Arak, Iran
2 - Department of Agricultural Entomology, Iranian Research Institute of Plant Protection, Tehran, Iran
3 - Department of Entomology, Faculty of Agriculture, Islamic Azad University, Arak Branch, Arak, Iran
4 - Department of Agricultural Entomology, Iranian Research Institute of Plant Protection, Tehran, Iran
5 - Agricultural & Natural Resources Research Center of Lorestan, Khorramabad, Iran

Received: 2012-02-25 Accepted : 2012-09-22 Published : 2013-08-23

Keywords:

Abstract :

The pomegranate fruit moth, Ectomyelois ceratoniae Zeller, and quince moth, Euzophera bigella Zeller, are the major frugivorous pest. They cause qualitative and quantitative losses of pomegranate fruit. Sexual pheromone traps may provide a real estimation of adult emergence and flight activity periods, emigration and immigration of such pests. To fulfill such a purpose, an experiment was performed to observe the population fluctuation of E. ceratoniae and E. bigella using synthetic pheromone traps in pomegranate orchards of Tang-e-Siab Koohdasht (Lorestan, Iran), in 2011. Adults of E. ceratoniae and E. bigella appeared in late April and May, respectively, and their flights continued until mid November. These pests populations showed four and three flight peaks during the growth season, respectively. The quince moth's population was higher than on pomegranate fruit moth's population, while the peak of the moth flight was between late July to early August. So in the pomegranate orchards of Lorestan region, in addition to pomegranate fruit moth, quince moth is one of the important fruit pests. The quince moth appears a month later in comparison to pomegranate fruit moth and both are active until the end of the season.