Semiautomated Identification of European Corn Borer (Lepidoptera: Crambidae)

The European corn borer Ostrinia nubilalis (Hübner, 1796) is a serious and widely studied pest of corn. The most common method of its control is by means of insecticides. However, biological control is becoming more and more popular. The hymenopteran parasitoid Trichogramma sp. is the most promising and effective one among the biological agents and is now widely used in North America and Europe. Its application should occur at the time when the European corn borer is at the beginning of the eggs laying period. However, the discrimination between the European corn borer and some other species occurring in agricultural landscapes at the same time can be difficult, especially for farmers which are neither familiar with the morphological nor molecular methods of identification. The scope of this study is to test the ability of the automatic computer equipment to determine the European corn borer and to separate it from the most common Lepidoptera pests found in corn plantations. The experiment showed that the 97.0% of the 247 specimens belonging to four common pestlepidopterans were correctly classified by the use of a personal computer, desktop scanner, and the special software. The obtained results showed that this technique based on wing measurements can be an effective tool for monitoring of the European corn borer. In the future, this method can be used by farmers to identify this pest and apply control measures at optimal time.