Do Natural Sources of Odor Enhance 

 Plum Curcullo Attraction to Traps? 



Ronald Prokopy and Tracy Leskey 



Department of Entomology, University of Massachusetts 



In a preceding article in this issue of Fruit 

 Notes, we suggested that addition of a powerful 

 attractive odor might enhance the capturing 

 power of a pyramid or cone trap to an extent 

 that such a trap could become reliable for 

 monitoring the abundance of plum curculios in 

 commercial orchards. Here, we report on 1996 

 tests in which we evaluated plum curculio 

 males, plum curculio females, whole stored 

 mature apples, pieces of stored mature apples, 

 and fresh immature apples as potential natural 

 sources of attractive odor for plum curculios. 

 We also evaluated ammonium carbonate (an 

 attractant for apple maggot flies) as a potential 

 attractant for plum curculios. 



Experiments & Results 



Curculios as Odor Sources. Curculios 



used as odor sources were separated by sex 

 shortly after emergence in summer and then 

 were held over winter in containers outdoors 

 until ready for use here. For each experiment, 

 they were confined in a plastic container in 

 groups of 20 same-sex individuals per 

 container. Each container was cylindrical, 

 about 2 inches in diameter and 3 inches tall, 

 covered at the top with a clear-plastic lid to 

 prevent entry of rainfall, and covered at the 

 bottom with window screen to allow odor to 

 emanate from the cylinder. Each cylinder, 

 including "check" cylinders containing no 

 curculios, received eight fresh-picked imma- 

 ture apples (about 1/2 inch diameter), removed 

 every other day. Traps with which these 

 containers were associated were examined 

 daily at 5 AM, at which time captured curculios 

 were removed. On average, 15 of the 20 



Fruit Notes, Volume 62 (Number 1), FalJ, 1997 



