The Indianmeal moth is the most common stored product insect found throughout the U.S. Adult Indianmeal moths can be found almost anywhere in the temperate regions of the world. In the U.S. and Europe it is the one insect pest that causes the most damage. The economic losses from these pests in processing, transporting and storing can be in the millions of dollars per contamination incident, product recall, consumer complaint/litigation, and pest control applications. Yet there is no efficient, low cost method to monitor and detect Indianmeal moths.The Indianmeal moth is most often found feeding on finished food products, the ingredients for food such as stored wheat products, milled/processed wheat, and other stored products such as milled cereal products, flour, bran, pasta products, spices or infesting equipment where food is prepared, processed, packaged or stored. Indianmeal moth larvae are the destructive life stage of the insect, eating voraciously. The larvae are highly mobile and continuously seek out new sources of food. While there are no direct health concerns, the psychological health of an individual knowingly consuming these larvae can have dramatic impacts and consequences including legal costs for the retailer, distributor or manufacturer of the product. It is the one insect found more often than any other on stored food and grain in the U.S. Over fifty years the genetics of this insect have changed to resist the commonly used pesticide Malathion. In the 1970's, the Indianmeal moth started showing signs of resistance to this insecticide. Since then, the Indianmeal moth has become the most resistant insect known to man. As the other insect competitors for the same habitat and food sources were slower to develop this genetic resistance to Malathion, the Indianmeal moth emerged as the primary pest of stored products. SDC's objective in this project is to develop an affordable and accurate device that can detect Indianmeal moth and Indianmeal moth larvae in stored products. The SDC device will provide early warning of insects in food processing and storage to help prevent infestation and control populations and drastically reduce the need for hazardous chemicals in the food industry. The primary goal of this project is to demonstrate the feasibility of SDC's innovative nano-tin oxide sensor to detect pheromones and semiochemicals, chemicals given off by insects to communicate with other insects. SDC will detect these chemicals simultaneously at very low levels and to differentiate between them and other gases in the air. SDC anticipates that if the project is successful the most damaging insect of stored products will be detected, and the size of their populations reported. The key technical benefit is a better quality reading of insect populations. This informs the pest manager of the best time to fumigate and prevents overuse of chemical fumigants. Today's usual procedure, trapping and counting insects in a discrete sample, then projecting a population for the total is subject to sampling error and could result in unnecessary fumigation. SDC's platform technology is based on the ability of its sensors to detect virtually any reducing gas with extremely high sensitivity, so the potential for follow-on applications is significant. SDC has plans to develop additional pheromone-based detection devices for other insects in the agricultural grain storage and stored products markets. Additionally, SDC recognizes the opportunities available to it and its potential corporate collaborators to use this technology for applications beyond agriculture such as medical diagnosis of pulmonary fungal infections, odor detection, monitoring indoor air quality, mold detection in residences and hospitals, and homeland security. It may be especially useful in this context for the federal government, which could use the device in forestry applications to locate termites that attack and destroy forests and forest prod
