The western corn rootworm (WCR), Diabrotica virgifera LeConte, is the most serious pest of maize in the United States. In pursuit of developing a diet free of antibiotics for WCR, we characterized effects of thermal exposure (50-141 °C) and length of exposure on quality of WCRMO-2 diet measured by life history parameters of larvae (weight, molting, and survival) reared on WCRMO-2 diet. Our results indicated that temperatures had non-linear effects on performance of WCRMO-2 diet, and no impacts were observed on the length of time exposure. The optimum temperature of diet processing was 60 °C for a duration less than 30 min. A significant decline in development was observed in larvae reared on WCRMO-2 diet pretreated above 75 °C. Exposing WCRMO-2 diet to high temperatures (110-141 °C) even if constrained for brief duration (0.9-2.3 s) caused 2-fold reduction in larval weight and significant delays in larval molting but no difference in survival for 10 days compared with the control diet prepared at 65 °C for 10 min. These findings provide insights into the effects of thermal exposure in insect diet processing.
Keywords: Diabrotica virgifera; WCRMO-2; corn rootworm; diet processing; heating.