A <i>Corcyra</i> Egg Card Making Machine for the Mass Production of <i>Trichogramma</i> Spp

K. M. Sreekumar; A. V. N. Paul; D. V. K. Samuel

doi:10.18311/jbc/2001/4103

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Authors

K. M. Sreekumar
Division of Entomology Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi 110012 ,IN
A. V. N. Paul
Division of Entomology Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi 110012 ,IN
D. V. K. Samuel
Division of Entomology Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi 110012 ,IN

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18311/jbc/2001/4103

Keywords:

Corcyra cephalonica, Egg Card Making Machine, Mass Production, Trichogramma.

Abstract

A machine for making Corcyra egg cards was designed, fahricated and evaluated for labour efficient mass production of Trichogramma egg cards. The machine could paste on an average 9.97 ml of eggs per minute compared to 0.7 ml in the manual method. The number of eggs pasted per 0.25 sq cm of the card varied from 32 to 145 eggs with an average of 73 eggs for machine made cards whereas the corresponding values for manually made cards were 45, 118 and 76.65, respectively. The average number of egg cards produced per hour in the machine operated system was 14.3 times higher when compared to the manual system. The machine is provided with an in-built UV chamber for the sterilization and inactivation of the host eggs. The cost of the machine works out to be about Rs.20, 000 per unit and this is the first report of a machine developed for host egg card preparation from India.