Determination of internal insect infestation of wheat: collaborative study

An improved method has been developed for determining internal insect infestation of wheat kernels. The method involves acid hydrolysis of cracked wheat, wet sieving to remove the acid, transferring to a 2 L Wildman trap flask, deaeration by boiling, and treatment with Tween 80-Na4EDTA. Insects are extracted with light mineral oil. Reports from 6 collaborators showed that recovery was 95.92% for adult insect heads and 97.22% for larvae by the proposed method as compared with 87.05% and 6.12%, respectively, by the official method. The method has been adopted official first action.