Control of Rice Powder Pest Sitophilus oryzae L. with Entomopathogenic Fungus Metarhizium anisopliae (Metch.)

<b>Background and Objective:</b> Rice is one of the most important staple foods in the world, especially on the Asian Continent. Postharvest pests can reduce the quality and quantity of rice by up to 25%. Control using pathogenic microbes is the best choice in controlling postharvest pests in general and <i>Sitophilus oryzae</i> rice powder pests in particular. Research has been carried out to know the effect of dosage concentrations of pathogenic cultures and LC₅₀ values of pathogenic <i>Metarhizium anisopliae</i> cultures on the control of <i>S. oryzae</i> rice powder pest. <b>Materials and Methods:</b> The concentration dose of the pathogenic culture of <i>M. anisopliae</i> acted as a treatment. The test insect population for each treatment was 25 imagos. The study of the effect of dose concentration of <i>M. anisopliae</i> culture on the mortality of <i>S. oryzae</i> imago used analysis of variance. Determination of the effective concentration of LC₅₀ using probit analysis. <b>Results:</b> The higher the concentration of the pathogenic culture of <i>M. anisopliae</i>, the higher the mortality of the adult rice powder pest <i>S. oryzae</i>. The highest mortality of rice powder pest <i>S. oryzae</i> occurred at a dose of 50% concentration of the pathogen <i>M. anisopliae</i> culture, namely 89.33%, followed by a concentration of 40% with a mortality of 72.0%, a concentration of 30% with a mortality of 57.33%, a concentration of 20% with a mortality of 13.33% and the lowest dose concentration of 10% with a mortality of 1.33%. <b>Conclusion:</b> The effective concentration dose (LC₅₀) of the pathogenic culture of <i>M. anisopliae</i> in controlling the rice powder pest <i>S. oryzae</i> was 31.88%.