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Submitted to: Meeting Abstract
Publication Type: Other Publication Acceptance Date: 2/20/2007 Publication Date: 2/20/2007 Citation: Campbell, J.F. 2007. Space and commodity fumigation research [abstract]. Presentation at the 2007 Industrial Fumigant Company Technical Training Conference, Kansas City, MO, February 20, 2007. Interpretive Summary: Technical Abstract: Fumigation is widely used in the food industry as part of a pest management program for stored-product insect pests, but field research on fumigants, including new methyl bromide alternatives, is still limited. There are challenges to evaluating fumigant efficacy, and in this presentation I will review of the issues involved in evaluating the impact of fumigation treatments on pest populations and the causes of pest resurgence after treatment. Data from long-term monitoring projects in food facilities and the impact of treatments on populations of different pest species will be used to illustrate points. How monitoring data can be used to estimate the spatial scale of pest population distribution and how this impacts the efficacy of treatments will be discussed. Critical questions that need to be addressed to accurately compare methyl bromide with new fumigants will be discussed, and input on planned research will be solicited. In the second half of the presentation, results from commodity fumigation tests will be presented. The objective of these tests was to evaluate the efficacy of new fumigants for the control of stored-product insects in packaged seed. The goal was complete mortality to the major stored-product pest species and life stages within the shortest exposure time. Commercial fumigation companies were contracted to make the fumigation recommendations and perform the fumigations. Fumigations under different environmental conditions were replicated and insect mortality measured using relatively large numbers of individual insects that enabled us to detect even low levels of survival. As a result of this work, some new monitoring techniques were developed to enable more rapid assessment of egg mortality during fumigations. |
