Potato Moth - a highly specialized garden pest

The birthplace of this butterfly, called the potato moth, is North and South America, where its caterpillars feed on leaves of wild nightshade crops. As well as another Colorado potato beetle from the New World, it was brought to Russia with imported vegetables infected with this pest. Having no natural enemies of nature, it spreads freely throughout the country, causing its voracity to seriously damage the potato crop, especially during storage of tubers.

Appearance of Potato Moth

Outwardly, butterflies of this species are rather inconspicuous and have the following species features:

1. Dimensions not exceeding 11-16 mm in wingspan.
2. The color of this pest contributes to the invisibility of the insect on the surface of plants. Its front wings are brownish gray with dark stripes and yellow scales. The hind wings are of a lighter color, having long fluffy fringe along the edges.
3. The head is light gray with developed dark antennae and palps.
4. The abdomen consists of several segments and is completely covered by wings at rest.
5. Feet - articulated, also having a protective gray-green color.
6. The eyes are large, faceted, widely spaced on both sides of the rounded head.

Larvae have no hairs and reach 13 mm in length. Depending on the place of residence, they can change color from pinkish-yellow to dirty white on the root crop and from gray-green to greenish-yellow on the plant. A dark strip stretches along their back. The head has a dark brown color. The pupa is brown and measures 5-6 mm.

Potato moths are very easy to confuse with another pest called cabbage moths. Cabbage Butterflies outwardly very similar to it, but there is still one characteristic difference - a dark border along the inner edge of the front wings of the potato moth. Cabbage border is sharper and lighter. It is impossible to confuse the larvae due to the nature of their nutrition and localization exclusively on "their" plant. Cabbage lays eggs on cruciferous leaves. Potato moth specializes exclusively in nightshade.

Interesting fact! Potato moth is not able to penetrate deep into the ground. Potatoes planted at a depth of 10 cm can be saved from voracious larvae.

Features of life and pest development

Moth butterflies prefer to fly out in the late afternoon and rest on a hot day on the inside of the leaves. There they lay their eggs. The masonry consists of 1-2 closely spaced eggs of light gray or white color. As larvae develop, they darken.

A caterpillar hatched 3-14 days after masonry forms spider web caves on a surface of leaves, fruits of vegetables and root crops from a specially released adhesive. Under their cover, she gnaws at long winding passages under the cuticle of plants and the skin of tubers, deepening as she grows and nourishes.

Before turning into a chrysalis and then into a butterfly, the caterpillar goes through 4 stages of development, during which it intensively feeds and molts. The pupal stage takes one to two weeks. After the release, the newborn butterfly is immediately capable of mating and laying eggs.

One butterfly is able to lay up to 100 eggs during the breeding period, such high fertility allowed it to spread rapidly throughout the European mainland. The good adaptive abilities of this insect contributed a lot to this. It feels great in a fairly wide temperature range, from 8 to 35 ⁰C. While all the other butterflies are still sleeping after a long winter, the potato moth has already made its first flight and laid eggs on the leaves of plants.

The insect can reproduce year-round, provided that there is a heated room, as a rule, it becomes a potato storage. In the field, individual individuals can survive mild frosts, wintering in the tubers remaining after harvesting.

How to detect a pest?

The following characteristic features of insect damage to garden crops:

1. Damage to the vesicles, which are also called mines. Inside them are caterpillars that are easily visible through the thin skin of leaves of plants such as eggplant and tobacco. On the leaves of pepper and potatoes, they are opaque, however, if you know what to look for, you can still find the moves.
2. As it feeds, the caterpillar moves along the veins of the leaves, filling the holes with its excrement. For the peculiarity to leave such peculiar mines they were nicknamed Mining Potato Moth.
3. In potato tubers, larvae enter through the eye or wound on its surface. At first, she eats passages under the skin itself, however, in the end, she gnaws the entire tuber, making it look like a sponge. Outwardly, the damage is very similar to the holes left by the wireworm, another potato pest, however, there is one difference. Wireworm larvae leave behind clean passages. The holes left by the potato moth are filled inside with cobwebs and excrement.
4. The presence of small testicles on the inside of the nightshade leaves.
5. The drying of the tops of the plants and the cobweb on the leaves.

Advice! In order to prevent the active propagation of the pest on its site, it is necessary to immediately burn the tops after harvesting and immediately take the vegetables and root crops to storage. The pre-winter digging of the earth will also be an effective control measure.

Control measures

For action against the pest to be effective, you need to know what the potato moth is afraid of. At the same time, control measures can be both preventive and pest control.

Preventive measures

Preventive measures may include the following:

• strict quality control of seed imported from outside;
• cultivation of early potato crops;
• in-depth (more than 10 cm) planting of tubers;
• hilling;
• Harvesting before lodging the tops.

Such measures will prevent the import and reproduction of the pest in small areas of infection. In case of serious damage to agricultural land, more serious actions are applied with the use of chemicals to destroy the pest.

Chemical and biological control methods

The following chemicals are used to combat potato moths:

• malathion;
• benzophosphate;
• citcor;
• decis.

Biological drugs are also effective, such as:

• lepidocide;
• bitoxibacillin.

Processing is carried out at the first sign of the appearance of butterflies, until the eggs are laid. Between treatments with chemicals pause in 1-2 weeks, biological - 7-8 days.

To prevent the addiction of a pest to chemicals, the same drug is not used more than 3 times. On vegetable crops and in the last weeks before digging potatoes, disinsection is best done with biological preparations.

Vaults before laying potatoes in them are thoroughly cleaned and disinfected. The same events are carried out with containers for tubers. Potatoes are treated with biological products and examined for damage.

It is advisable to maintain a temperature not exceeding 5 in the premises for storing vegetables and root crops ⁰C and minimum humidity. In such conditions, the development of larvae is suspended, which helps to preserve the crop.