New oligidic production diet for Lygus hesperus Knight and L-lineolaris (Palisot de Beauvois)

A new oligidic (undefined) diet for rearing Lygus hesperus Knight (Heteropt era: Miridae) and L. lineolaris (Palisot de Beauvois) is described. The die t (referred to as NI diet) is a semisolid slurry that accommodates the soli d-to-liquid feeding habits of Lygus spp. The NI diet consists of an "entomo phage component" (cooked, whole chicken eggs, chicken egg yolks, sugar, and yeast) combined with plant components (soy bean flour, wheat germ, lima be an meal, and soy lecithin). Biological fitness estimates for L. hesperus in dicated that mean biomass production per cage, adult wet and dry weights, s urvival to the adult stage, and egg production were significantly greater f or the NI diet than for the existing standard, Debolt (1982) diet. The ingr edients in the NI diet cost about 1/8 those in the Debolt diet, and prepara tion requires less than 1/2 of the labor. The cost of diet for production p er 1000 eggs was approximately $0.004 compared to $0.04 for an equal number of eggs from Debolt diet. Recent work, started after the currently reporte d bioassays with L. hesperus, indicates that the NI diet also supports deve lopment and reproduction in the tarnished plant bug, L. lineolaris. This di et was used to rear and 15 generations of L. hesperus and is currently bein g used to support production colonies; it has also been used to rear L. lin eolaris for 5 generations, thus far. The L. lineolaris colony started from field collected populations has been reared continuously and exclusively on the NI diet and is currently in a log phase of population growth. This die t should be beneficial in providing a great reduction of Lygus production c osts while producing a high quality, vigorously reproducing insect.