Rearing Eggplant Fruit and Shoot Borer: Rearing in Chamber

Rearing in Chamber
Rearing Eggplant Fruit and Shoot Borer

	For oviposition, release inside the chamber 2-3 pairs of freshly emerged Leucinodes adults. Cover the top. (Adults can be obtained by scouting an eggplant field or storing several Leucinodes- damaged fruits in a laboratory cage with a layer of soil at the bottom. Collect the adults as they emerge from pupae in the soil.
	Place the oviposition chamber in a room or incubator maintained a 26-30 °C. Check the nylon netting and purple paper after 4-6 days for the presence of eggs. Leucinodes will lay eggs on the paper and the netting.
	Place slices of rearing diet on tissue paper in 9-cm-diameter plastic cups. Cut out small pieces of the nylon netting and purple paper onto which eggs have been laid. Place pieces of the cut nylon and paper (bearing a total of about 50 eggs) on the rearing diet. Cover the cups with snap-on lids lined with rough tissue paper.
	When larvae reach the third instar, remove them and place two larvae each on fresh diets in 30-ml cups. Cover the cups with tissue-paper-lined snap-on lids. After one week, transfer the larvae to containers with fresh diet.
	Leucinodes larvae will crawl onto the tissue paper lining the lid, and will pupate there. Pupae can be collected from the lid.
	Adults usually emerge from 8 to 10-day-old pupae. The adults can be used to initiate another cycle of mass rearing.