Effect of diets containing of sesame, soybean and rapeseed meal on life table parameters of the flour moth, Ephestia kuehniella (Lep.: Pyralidae)

The Mediterranean flour moth (MFM), Ephestia kuehniella (Zeller), is one of the major pests of stored products. Eggs and larvae of this moth are widely used for rearing parasitoids and predators. In this study, the effect of the standard diet including a mixture of wheat flour (68%), wheat bran (29,%) plus 3% yeast and also the standard diet + sesame meal (30%), soybean (30%) andrapeseed (30%) on biological characteristics and life table parameters of E. kuehniella were studied by using the Two-sex, Age-stage life table theory. The condition of experiments were; 25±1ºC, 65±5% RH and complete darkness. The results showed that the flour moth fecundity significantly increased by adding sesame meal (477.69 eggs) compared tosoybean meal (451.77 eggs), rapeseed meal (411.21eggs) and standard diet (393.20 eggs). Also, significant differences were found between the larval stage durations being 34.31, 31.40, 33.26 and 30.37 days for sesame meal, soybean meal, rapeseed meal and standard diet, respectively. The intrinsic rate of increase (r) for sesame meal, rapeseed meal containing and standard diet was 0.102, 0.108, 0.103 and 0.109 day-1, respectively. Therefore, the results showed that diets containing sesame meal, soybean meal and rapeseed meal did not have much more efficiency on population parameters of this insect than standard diet at least in this study conditions.