This proposal seeks to develop a method for the encapsulation of a liquid artificial culture medium that has been proven suitable for rearing a variety of beneficial insects. There are no existing methods available for the production of soft-shelled, aqueous-filled, 1 cm diameter capsules which could be used to encapsulate water-based artificial diets. All current industrial encapsulation technologies use hardshell or gelatin-based approaches (for encapsulating drugs and chemicals) that are water soluble, and are not ideal in size to feeding insects. None of these methods work with water-based encapsulants, necessitating the development of a novel encapsulation approach: If successful, the outcome of this research could provide an important enabling technology that will foster a dramatic improvement in cost-effective rearing of many beneficial insects for use in augmentative biological control. An array of polymers will be tested in terms of their acceptability to the insects in question, and their biochemical and biophysical suitability as coatings for an aqueous medium. Processes that may be suitable for the application of this coating and the automated mass production of individual coated droplets will be researched.Applications:The technology to be developed under this proposal will play a key role in moving the cost structure for production of beneficial insects into the range needed for these products to compete well with conventional insecticides. By implementing the use of artificial diet and industrial methods for presenting this medium to beneficials, the rearing costs can be lowered dramatically. This new technology should decrease the current costs of producing beneficial insects by natural diet means by as much as 100 fold. This would help enable the use of augmentative biological control in commercial agriculture, and minimize the use of pesticides.
