Treatments for the Protection of Stored Southern-Grown Corn from Rice Weevil Attack: Exploratory Tests

Excerpts from the report Introduction: The rice weevil, Sitophilus oryza (L.), is a serious pest of stored corn in the Southern States, from Virginia to Texas. Not many storage structures in this area are tight enough to permit fumigation, so an urgent need exists for some other means of preventing rice weevil infestation. The most promising control method other than fumigation appeared to be a protective treatment that could be applied to corn after harvest, the dual objective being to destroy the rice weevil infestation that had already been started in the field as the corn matured and to protect the corn from reinfestation from other sources during storage. Such studies were begun at Tifton, Ga. , in 1951 and continued until 1958. The Tifton location was considered representative of the Southern area as far as rice weevil infestation in stored corn was concerned. This report presents the results of exploratory tests made with five insecticides--lindane, malathion, methoxychlor, synergized pyrethrum, and ryania. At the start of the studies, these materials were considered as offering possibilities at application rates that would not create objectionable residues, but as these studies and others elsewhere were continued, the attitudes on acceptability of certain insecticides were altered somewhat. The experimental data on these insecticides are presented with the others, nevertheless, as a matter of record.