| Abstract: | Helicoverpa armigera (Hübner), Earias vittella (Fabricius), Spodoptera litura (Fabricius), Spodoptera exigua (Hübner) (all Lepidoptera: Noctuidae), Pectinophora gossypiella (Saunders) (Lepidoptera: Gelechiidae), and Chilo partellus (Swinhoe) (Lepidoptera: Crambidae) are the major pests of cotton and maize. Mass‐rearing of these insects under controlled conditions is necessary to obtain the numbers needed to conduct bioassays to screen insecticides, proteins, and other compounds, as tools for insect pest management. We present a diet suitable for rearing the six lepidopteran pests (five cotton and one maize pest). We further show that this diet is on par with or superior to the published diet recipes for each of the insect species, which were studied for three generations. We also discuss the advantages of antimicrobials other than formalin for keeping microbial growth under check. A combination of antimicrobial solution and benomyl provided effective control and suppressed the growth of microbes for a longer period than a formalin‐containing diet. A common diet for six pests provide opportunities for automation of diet preparation in addition to improved throughput and consistency in the process, while eliminating diet‐batch related errors. |
