Comparison of pheromone lures with ethyl acetate and trap design for their attraction to red palm weevil, Rhynchophorus ferrugineus Olivier

Background/Question/Methods

The red palm weevil, Rhynchophorus ferrugineus Olivier is the key pest of date palm in Saudi Arabia for more than two decades.  Among the important control methods is the use of food baited pheromone trapping to attract and kill both male and female adult weevils.  The efficacy of two kinds of lures with and without ethyl acetate, a known kairomone was field tested. 

Results/Conclusions

Ferrolure+ of Chem Tica with and without ethyl acetate captured an average of 4.4 and 11.6 weevils per trap per week, while Alpha lure with and without kairomone attracted 5.4 and 9.4 weevils/trap/week respectively. The addition of ethyl acetate significantly improved the weevil catch but there was no difference in the rate of attraction between the lures.  In another field experiment, standard Saudi pheromone trap was compared with a date stump trap for a period of five months.  A total of 430 weevils @ 7.17 weevils per trap per month were caught by standard Saudi pheromone trap but, the date stump trap captured a total of 654 weevils @ 10.9 weevils per trap per month.  This study clearly indicated the superiority of date stump trap and addition of ethyl acetate for improving ecologically sound mass trapping protocols for red palm weevil.