| Planococcus citri |
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קמחית ההדר, נקבה צעירה |
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Host plants and damage
The citrus mealybug, Planococcus citri, is an important pest with a worldwide distribution. It has an enormously wide range of host plants such as citrus, persimmon, banana, vine, and many outdoors, greenhouse and indoors ornamental plants.
The mealybug causes direct and indirect damage to its host plant by sucking sap. The direct damage takes the form of distortion and yellowing of foliage, sometimes followed by defoliation. If flowers or fruit are present, these often fall off. The indirect damage is caused by the large quantities of honeydew produced by the mealybug, which coats leaves, stems, flowers and fruit and serves as a growth substrate for sooty-mould fungi. The sooty-mould, when present in high quantity, is both unsightly and also inhibits photosynthesis in the green tissues of the plant.
In citrus, the sooty-mould secreted by mealybugs sitting in the calyx of the fruit attracts moths such as the carob moth and the ring-boring orange moth. Feeding of the caterpillars around the calyx may cause the fruit to drop.
Description and basic biology
The citrus mealybug is a small, oval, usually mobile insect, covered with white waxy secretions with lateral and terminal filaments of various lengths. The adult female lays its eggs within a sac composed of a white cottony mass of wax fibers. The eggs hatch to produce very active first instar nymphs known as "crawlers", which are yellow in color and lack the waxy coating. From the first instar larva, the mealybug undergoes either two molts to produce an adult male or three molts to form an adult female. Under optimal conditions (temperature of 26°C and relative humidity of 60%) the mealybug completes its development from egg to adult within 30 days.
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| The Solution |
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| Cryptolaemus montrouzieri |
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| The Solution |
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| Anagyrus pseudococci |
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