Quarantine

With the accelerating process of world economic integration and the increasing frequency of trade between countries, the number of invasive species is growing rapidly. However, invasive species can exert great pressure on the long-established and stable local ecosystems.

Among them, insects are more likely to invade successfully than other species due to their unique biological characteristics. They have adverse effects in many fields such as agriculture and forestry, which seriously endanger biodiversity, ecology and national economy.

Adverse Effect of Insect Invasion

Characteristics of Invasive Insects

• Strong spreading ability: The invasive insects spread rapidly and in large numbers through human activities.
• Strong survival ability: Some invasive insects can even survive for a period of time under various adverse conditions, such as high temperature, low temperature, drought, hunger and so on.
• Strong reproductive ability: The invasive insects generally have a short reproductive cycle and can produce a large number of offspring in a short period of time..
• Strong competitive ability: The invasive insects are more competitive than native species in the invaded areas.

Quarantine Methods using Insect Pheromones

In order to protect agricultural and forestry production and ecological security, it is necessary to strengthen the quarantine and supervision of invasive insects to strictly prevent the introduction of invasive organisms. Foreign invasive insects are the focus of port quarantine prevention. In view of the invasive characteristics of alien insects, targeted measures should be taken to strengthen the quarantine of inbound transported goods and their packaging to prevent the introduction of alien insects.

Insect pheromone can give full play to its advantages in pest quarantine. It can not only be applied to quarantine pests at various ports to effectively help intercept the epidemic, but also can be used as an effective tool for monitoring the spread of epidemic areas and conducting investigations on control effects.

• Advantages

• Instances

Bactrocera cucurbitae

The bactrocera cucurbitae is a kind of worldwide quarantine pests. Sex pheromones are very effective in sexually attracting adult bactrocera cucurbitae, so the lures can be used for the identification and quarantine of male bactrocera cucurbitae.

Hyphantria cunea

Hyphantria cunea is an international quarantine pest with large reproduction, strong adaptability, wide spread and serious damage, which can be monitored and quarantined with American white moth sex pheromone traps in epidemic areas and major traffic routes with goods transportation.

Bark beetles

The specificity of bark beetles aggregation pheromones is not obvious, and any aggregation pheromone released into the environment by a kind of bark beetle species may be sensed by other bark beetles species at the same time. The infested forest trees will release certain chemical compounds to induce bark beetles parasitism, and bark beetles can also transform the chemicals parasitism to synthesize pheromones. Therefore, lures formulated according to the relevant components of aggregated pheromones have been used in bark beetle quarantine with good results.

Other Methods

• Insect molecular biology method

Molecular biology aims to study the molecular basis of biological activity within and between cells. As a DNA-based method, molecular biology method can identify and classify insect species accurately and objectively, as well as the identification period is short. However, the current molecular biology technique for insect classification is still at a relatively low level of research and the method is not mature enough.

• Insect morphology method

Insect morphology is the study and description of the physical form of insects. The physical form of insects includes the insect's head, thorax, abdomen, legs, mouthparts and other parts. Based on the differences in body structure amongst insect species, insect morphology method can classify and identify insects by their outward appearance.

With the globalization of the economy, the quarantine of invasive insects is becoming more and more important to protect the ecological environment. Compared with other existing quarantine methods, insect pheromones have been widely used in the field of pest quarantine due to their unique advantages such as specificity and sensitivity.

Alfa Chemistry have been specialized in insect pheromones for years, we provide high quality insect pheromone chemicals and related services. Please don't hesitate to contact us for any enquiries you may have, we are happy to provide you with more detailed services.