Mass trapping consists of capturing the highest number of individuals of a population in order to reduce its effectives in the area in a significant way.
The high specificity of the sexual pheromone is the reason why only the rice borer population is affected and the rest of the fauna is kept intact
Probodelt has been a pioneer in applying mass trapping on the rice. It started to use this technique in 1996 in an experimental way. Since then, and thanks to improvements in its use, bigger and bigger areas have been covered.
For mass trapping of the rice borer, we use funnel type traps laid out in a regular way throughout the area to be treated (about 4-5 traps per hectare). It should be noted that the most important thing is not where to put each trap but the total effect of the set of traps. So it is essential to work on relatively big areas, most of all as regards its perimeter.
Mass trapping is placed on the field just before the beginning of the first flight of adults of the season (first fortnight of May). Because a maximum effectiveness of captures has to be kept throughout all the season, we can either use formulations which give a very high persistence, or replace the pheromone by the time it starts to lose its attracting capacity.
In parallel with mass trapping, every year, Probodelt carries out studies on different pheromones in order to know accurately the behavior, on the Delta, of the different formulations available.
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