Evaluation of the Effectiveness of Attractant Trap Colors on Attractive Red Palm Weevil, Rhynchophorus ferrugineus (Olivier) in Egypt

Abstract

Red palm weevil (RPW), Rhynchophorus ferrugineus (Olivier) (Coleoptera: Curculionidae) is at present considered the biggest threat to palm trees worldwide. Due to the current trend towards the use of environmentally-friendly control measures: Including pheromone traps. Experiments were carried out in date palm farm at Abo Nagi El-Kassasein district, Ismailia Governorate, Egypt during one season (2017/2018). Eight trap colors were tested for attraction to the red palm weevil .Adding colors (red, blue and yellow, green, orange, violet, black and white). The black traps color was the best color to attract RPW .The obtained results obviously indicated that the numbers of captured adults increased highly significantly in traps black color which representing 16.26 % of the total catch than other colors; red represented 15.8 %; blue which represented 14.42 %; green which represented 13.41% ;orange which represented 12.15 %; violet which represented 10.81%; yellow which represented 9.5 % and white represented 7.63 % .Accordingly, it is recommended to use black pheromone trap. Males captures in all color traps registered 2308 while females’ captures reached 3112, with a sex ratio of 1: 1.35. There was temporal variation in number of R. ferrugineus per trap per month during the trapping period. Population attained highly peak in November for all trap colors, all traps captured more in April, May and November (591,733 and 828, respectively). Generally, to achieve more capturing effectiveness of aggregation pheromone traps in controlling red palm weevil, it is necessary to use trap colors black (holes and funnel without cover) and ground height.