Authors : Saripah Bakar, M.L.S. Noor Hajjar, A. Alias and A. Zhang
Abstract: The emergence of Cocoa Pod Borer (CPB), Conopomorpha cramerella Snellen (Lepidoptera: Gracillariidae) in Malaysia was first detected in Tawau, Sabah in 1980. Since then, this pest has become a major threat to cocoa growing countries in the Southeast Asia Region, particularly in Malaysia, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. Various control efforts were studied, introduced and implemented in Malaysia ranging from biological, chemical, mechanical, host plant resistance and biotechnology aspects. Most of the control approaches from biological aspects were focused on the cocoa black ants, entomophatogenic fungi and microbial, unfortunately, less focus were given to the plant-derived products. Therefore, the study was undertaken to evaluate site pupation preference of C. cramerella using three Essential Oils (EOs) from the Zingiberaceae order that widely planted in Malaysia. The EOs of Zingiber officinale (ginger), Curcuma longa (turmeric) and Alpinia galanga (galanga) were tested on the cocoa pods and observation was carried out in the laboratory. The results show that cumulative means of C. cramerella pupation on cocoa pods was lower compared to cocoa leaves regardless of different treatments through 10 days of observation. Pupation on the cocoa leaves shows significant difference (p<0.05) on day-2 (1.653 a), compared to days 6, 8, 9 and 10. The results were contradicted with the observation on pods where the highest number of pupation was recorded at day-1 (0.508 b) and day-10 (0.488 b). Pupa emergence on the cocoa pod surface and cocoa leaves from day-1 through day-10 shows the highest mean of pupation was observed at control treatment in all daily observations, except for day-2. Pupa emergence on cocoa pods was observed to have significantly different (p<0.05) at control (0.324 a), compared to Z. officinale (0.556 b), C. longa (0.580 b) and A. galanga (0.641 b). No significant different denoted among EOs on the pupation on cocoa pods. Throughout the observation among EOS, Z. officinale recorded the lowest pupation both for cocoa pods (0.556 b) and cocoa leaves (0.655 c). The results may suggest that the EOs of Zingiberaceae, particularly the Z. officinale may have a positive effect and can be a part of botanical pesticide formulation in the future.
Saripah Bakar, M.L.S. Noor Hajjar, A. Alias and A. Zhang, 2019. Pupation Preference of Conopomorpha Cramerella (Snellen) after Treated with Zingiber officinale, Curcuma longa and Alpinia galanga Essential Oils. Journal of Engineering and Applied Sciences, 14: 6150-6155.