Postharvest Insecticidal Dips for Control of Insect Pests on Red Ginger, 1993

Abstract

Efficacy trials were conducted in Sep on infested flowers harvested from a commercial ginger farm in Hilo, HI. Flowers were randomly divided into replicates with 5 flowers each. Each treatment consisted of 4 replicates. Flowers were immersed for 5 min into 5 gal buckets containing 4 gal of insecticide solution (26°C) and gently agitated 10 times, at immersion, at 1.5 min, and again before removal for a total of 30 times. Control flowers for the insecticidal dip were immersed in water following the same procedure as described. After dipping, flowers were held in buckets and allowed to air dry. Treatment efficacy was determined 24 h after treatment by dissecting the terminal leaf sheath and flower bracts. Data were taken on the total number of aphids, mealybugs, ants and scales recovered from the 5 flowers. The criterion for insect mortality was no movement. Due to low populations, the three species of mealybugs were pooled for analysis. The number of aphids, ants, mealybugs, and scales were transformed to Iogl0(x+1) and subjected to ANOVA.