Floral lures for attract and kill and for seasonal monitoring of alfalfa looper, corn earworm and cabbage looper moths

Federal and State regulatory legislation, growing environmental issues, and worker safety related concerns have served to initiate research into the development of alternative approaches to conventional pesticides for managing pestiferous insects. Chemical lures derived from "moth-visited" flowers, which lure both sexes of alfalfa looper, corn earworm and cabbage looper moths, have been developed. These feeding attractants are dispensed from polypropylene vials that provide controlled release of the attractant. A killing station was tested in the field for use in combination with these lures as an attract and kill system. Alfalfa looper female moth activity was significantly reduced in field plots due to deployment of killing stations, evidenced by reduction of moths captured in monitoring traps. Two feeding attractant based killing stations designs were field tested against corn earworm moths. The shuttlecock based killing station significantly reduced the number of corn earworms captured in monitoring traps. In trials inside a screened building, oviposition on potted plants by female alfalfa looper moths was significantly reduced by the use of 2 killing stations. Both sexes of alfalfa looper and cabbage looper moths demonstrated high attraction rates to the killing station in wind tunnel assays, and exhibited high mortality rates when they contacted the killing station. Moths were less likely to be attracted to lures when fed sugar during the adult stage and fed alfalfa looper moths were less affected by killing stations in screen building trials, compared to unfed moths. Seasonal activity of corn earworm, cabbage looper and alfalfa looper moths were monitored in southcentral Washington State during 2002, 2003 and 2004. Moths were monitored with the use of female sex pheromone and feeding attractant baited traps. A series of experiments were conducted in order to assess feeding attractants ideal release rates, different release systems, and lure composition for all three species. This attract and kill system has potential to be adopted for alfalfa looper and cabbage looper control in vegetables, and other high input field crops. Relevant advances in this technology include environmental benefits, attraction of female moths, and efficacy in reducing oviposition by female moths.