LAUSR

Abstract The mealybug of Dysmicoccus lepelleyi Betrem (Hemiptera: Pseudococcidae) attacks a wide range of fruits, vegetables, and ornamental plants and is categorized as a quarantine pest in China. Utilization of phytosanitary irradiation (PI) as a potential treatment to disinfest agricultural commodities in trade (which has expanded rapidly in the recent years) and preventing the hatch of F1 generation eggs is used as a criterion for the PI treatment of mealybugs. A RS-2000 Pro X-ray irradiator (Rad SourceTechnologies, Inc.) was used to treat the gravid adult females and eggs of the mealybug. The primary tests were conducted to explore the minimum dose for preventing egg-hatch from the irradiated adult females, resulted in a 1.69% of eggs hatched from 100 Gy-irradiated adult females and no crawler developed as treated at the dose of 110 and 120 Gy. To estimate the minimum dose for preventing egg-hatching, the dose–response tests were conducted for 1-, 2-, and 3-d-old eggs at the dose of 20, 40, 60, 80, 100, and 120 Gy, respectively. The results showed that the radio-tolerance increased very slowly with developmental times of eggs, and the estimated dose for 99.9968% mortality at the 95% confidence level (Probit 9) by Probit analysis is 146.2, 155.7, and 156.1 Gy for 1-, 2-, and 3-d-old eggs, respectively. Therefore, dose range between 110 and 160 Gy could be efficient to prevent the reproduction of this mealybug.