Physical control of stored product insects

Abstract

Given the declining number of chemical agents for pest control, non-chemical methods gain importance in stored product Integrated Pest Management. Physical methods play an important role not only in pest control, but also in pest prevention (e.g. product cooling, drying, insect-proof storage and packaging) and pest monitoring (e.g. measurement of temperature, product density, movement or bioacoustics). In pest control, heat disinfestation has become an established method for empty structures. A difficulty is that insulators such as large amounts of flour, dust or bag stacks with products need to be removed prior to treatment. Freezing at temperatures of minus 18°C is a method to disinfest high-value products without the risk of deteriorating product quality. However, energy costs may be the limiting factor. For fine and powdery goods such as flour, sieving and milling is the only choice because just mechanical methods can lead to effective pest control in this substrate. In future, processing steps leading to  pest control (e.g. heating, milling, extrusion) should be combined with pest exclusion, ventilation and temperature management in order to keep product quality high and pest control efforts at a minimum.
Keywords: control, heat, cold, impact, sieving