Odour signals for detection and control of indoor pyralid moths

Three pyralid moths, the Mediterranean flour moth (Ephestia kuehniella), the almond moth (Ephestia cautella) and the Indian meal moth (Plodia interpunctella), infest food products all over the world and cause severe problems in factories, shops and households. For health and environmental
reasons chemical control becomes more and more restricted. We here present some promising results offering efficient detection and control of these species based on semiochemicals, and line up a number of remaining questions to be answered in order to improve the reliability and competitiveness of the methods used. For P. interpunctella and E. cautella we found that more complex pheromone blends were superior to the commercially available one-component blend in attracting males, and
should be used if increased sensitivity is desired. The almond moth, males as well as females, can be trapped in buckets with tap water, which will give an estimate of the population level without use of pheromone traps. All three species show positive response to odours identified from chocolate, and this could possibly be developed further and used to determine relative population densities. For population suppression the pheromone-mediated mating disruption technique was employed in
localities with infestations of all three species. Based on several indirect methods to estimate the population densities we conclude that this technique has a large potential for controlling all three moth
species.