Development of artificial diet for mass production of bioproducts containing predatory mites

Abstract

The efficient production of natural enemies is fundamental for the success of the use of biological control on integrated pest management programs. Considering the availability of predatory mites for biological control, the family Phytoseiidae stands out for the high number of species commercially available. However, the mass production of some species of this family may be challenging. It happens due to the specificity of some phytoseiid species that fed only on their phytophagous prey, demanding a tritrophic system (composed by the host plant, the prey and the predator) for their massal rearing. On the other hand, the production of generalist phytoseiids may be facilitated by using factitious prey, simpler to be mass reared than natural prey. In this context, Astigmatina are the most used species as factitious prey, since they can be easily reared on closed massal production units (MPUs) fed on cheap food sources. However, although representing an important advance when compared to tritrophic system, the use of astigmatid mites as factitious prey still presents some difficult, such as the flour or bran used for astigmatid feeding favors the proliferation of contaminations and the presence of the adults (large and easily visible) represents a contamination on the bioproduct. To overcome these challenges, the main goal of this project is to develop an artificial diet composed by sterilized eggs of Astigmatina. Therefore, the specific objectives are: 1) to establish a methodology for separating the astigmatid eggs from the other products present on the massal rearing units; 2) to sterilize the astigmatid eggs, avoiding their development in the MPUs and 3) to evaluate the efficiency of this artificial diet on the production of the Phytoseiidae Neoseiulus californicus, currently produced on a tritrophic system. The development of this artificial diet will represent an important innovation for the optimization on the mass production of several predators produced by Promip, becoming one of the most important inputs on the production line of the company. (AU)