About this Tool
An Identification Guide for Fruit Fly and Stored Grain Pests

The Tool and its Content

The Content of the tool has its own limitations vis-a-vis its coverage of entities and features is concerned. The following elucidates the how the key is structured, thus by helping in misidentification of entities

The tool broadly covers Fruit Fly (select) and Stored Grain Pests (Select) entities only. The tool shall be updated by adding new entities under the broad categories mentiond.
 
Categories Covered This tool covers select number of Fruit Fly and Stored Grain Pest entities.
 
Limited Number of Species The number of species addressed in this tool is only a small percentage of the fauna which consists of several thousand species. Therefore, there is a chance that your specimen may key to a species that is not the correct match. All identifications should be compared to the species pages and an authoritatively identified reference specimen for further assessment.


Fruit Fly

Fruit flies are common in homes, restaurants, supermarkets and wherever else food is allowed to rot and ferment. Adults are about 1/8 inch long and usually have red eyes. The front portion of the body is tan and the rear portion is black. Fruit flies lay their eggs near the surface of fermenting foods or other moist, organic materials. Upon emerging, the tiny larvae continue to feed near the surface of the fermenting mass. This surface-feeding characteristic of the larvae is significant in that damaged or over-ripened portions of fruits and vegetables can be cut away without having to discard the remainder for fear of retaining any developing larvae. The reproductive potential of fruit flies is enormous; given the opportunity, they will lay about 500 eggs. The entire lifecycle from egg to adult can be completed in about a week.

Fruit flies are especially attracted to ripened fruits and vegetables in the kitchen. But they also will breed in drains, garbage disposals, empty bottles and cans, trash containers, mops and cleaning rags. All that is needed for development is a moist film of fermenting material. Infestations can originate from over-ripened fruits or vegetables that were previously infested and brought into the home. The adults can also fly in from outside through inadequately screened windows and doors.

Fruit flies are primarily nuisance pests. However, they also have the potential to contaminate food with bacteria and other disease-producing organisms.

 
Stored Grain Pest

The most important insect damaging pulses in field and storage are referred as bruchids or pulse beetles. The genus Callosobruchus has large number ofspecies representing C. maculatus (Fabricius), C. chinensis (Linnaeus), C. analis (Fabricius) and C. phaseoli (Gyllenhal) are more common in subtropical regions. However, C. rhodesianus (Pic) and C. sunnotatus (Pic) are also present in tropical region. C. theobromae (Linnaeus) is also found in pods of pigeonpea in India. Acanthoscelides obtectus is serious pest in rajmash. Other insects pests which cause damage to stored legumes are Trogoderma granarium (Everts), Rhyzopertha dominicia (Fabricius), Tribolium castaneum (Herbast), Ephestia cautella (Walker), Corcyra cephalonica (Stainton), Latheticus oryzae (Waterhouse), Lasioderma serricorne (Fabicius), Stegobium paniceum (Linnaeus), Oryzaephilus surinamensis (Linnaeus), Cryptolestes ferrugineus (Steph) and few species of mites. Fungi from genera Penicillium and Aspergillus in association with these insects enhance the rate of deterioration. In India, pulses are mostly consumed in form of dal or dehusked split, which in absence of seed coat are prone to moisture gain and fungal infestation, besides preferred by insects other than bruchids. The split pulses are attacked by Rhizopertha dominica, Trogoderma granarium, Tribolium castaneum and Cadra cautella under storage conditions. The losses due to insect activity during storage are physical loss, loss in carbohydrates and proteins, nutritional losses and contamination of product with uric acid, fragments and faecal matter.



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