Mating disruption for control of the white grub beetle Dasylepida ishigakiensis (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae) with synthetic sex pheromone in sugarcane fields

The feasibility of mating disruption with synthetic sex pheromone for the control of the white grub beetle Dasylepida ishigakiensis (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae) was examined by permeating sugarcane fields with a racemic mixture of 2-butanol (rac-2B) released from polyethylene-tube dispensers on Miyako Island, Japan in 2011. An application of rac-2B released from 10,000 tube dispensers into 3,200 m² sugarcane fields significantly reduced the mating rate of feral females and catches of feral males with R2B-baited traps compared with the results from untreated sugarcane fields. The larval density for the treated fields was found to be nearly zero in the following winter when the corresponding figure for untreated fields was high (1.73 and 2.33/40 × 40 cm quadrat). These results clearly show that the mating disruption technique using rac-2B could be highly promising for the control of D. ishigakiensis in sugarcane fields.