10 ANNUAL REPORTS OF DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE, 1953 
during routine fumigations. Necessary modifications and changes to 
insure maximum efficiency have been made. 
Promising New Methods Developed for Disinfesting Airplanes 
Two new developments have occurred in research to improve the 
aerosol and residue spray treatments now used in airplanes to prevent 
accidental transmission of insect pests to new locales. One of them is 
a transparent residue with long-lasting qualities obtained by adding 
a chlorinated polyphenyl to lindane. The life of the lindane is ex- 
tended appreciably, and the lindane stay- in solution in the mixture, 
thus resulting in a clear and transparent residue. The second develop- 
ment is the use of lindane vapors in the plane. They are introduced 
by placing a filter screen impregnated with crystalline lindane in the 
air-conditioning duct. Each development was made by an entomolo- 
gist-chemist research team. Their adaptation to use on military and 
commercial planes is being carried out cooperatively with the U. S. 
Air Force and the U. S. Public Health Service. 
Light Traps Attractive to Stored-Grain Insects 
Black-light traps have proved attractive to stored-grain insects in 
preliminary tests in Texas. A trap located in a grain sorghum bin 
at Beeville caught, during February 1953, 52,600 moths of four 
species, 14,252 rice weevils, 1,1G6 flour beetles, and smaller numbers of 
lesser grain borers and flat grain beetles. One trap in a rough-rice 
warehouse in Houston, where the insects were disturbed by removal of 
the rice, captured 43,700 insects in 18 hours. The results indicate that 
light traps may be useful in determining when control measures 
should be applied, and in evaluating the efficiency of such measures. 
These tests were made in cooperation with the Texas Agricultural 
Experiment Station and the Division of Farm Electrification of the 
Bureau of Plant Industry, Soils, and Agricultural Engineering. 
Rice Weevil Eats Five Times Its Own Weight 
Rice weevils ate five times their own weight during development 
under laboratory conditions. Wheat kernels Lost 20 percent of their 
original weight during the developmental period of rice weevils in- 
festing them, and this loss was five times the weight of the emerged 
adult.-. Sixty-eight percent of the Loss occurred during the fir 
days of development, during which there was no outward evidence of 
infestat ion. These data were collected in studies in which clean wheat 
was infested on a given date, and weighed at weekly intervals until 
development of the weevils was completed. Radiographs of the lots 
permitted determination of the exact number of kernels infested >o 
that the mean weight loss per kernel Could be computed. 
COTTON INSECTS 
(.'niton [nsecta Cause Quarter»Billion*Dollar Lom 
Cotton and cottonseed having an estimated value of - -,000 
were destroyed in L952 by insects, according to the National Cotton 
