International Journal of Entomology Research

Authors
Hayder Shammer Abbas, Ammar Ahmed Sultan, Bassim Shehab Hamad

Abstract
The effectiveness of some Iraqi isolates of Metarhizium anisopliae (Metchnikoff) Sorokin (Ma-h, Ma88, Ma19 and Ma29) was evaluated against adults of the Mediterranean fruit fly Ceratitis capitata under laboratory condition. Depending on the LC50 values, the isolate Ma88 was the highest mortality for males (8 × 10⁶ spores ml) followed by Ma29 isolate with median lethal concentration of 1.3 × 10 ⁷ spores ml. Exposing of females to mentioned isolates demonstrated that the LC50 values were very close, it was 2.0 × 10⁶ sporesml. for Ma88 isolate and 2.2 × 10⁶ sporesml for Ma29 isolate. The median lethal time (LT50) of tested isolates explained that the Ma88 isolate was the most virulence against males (4.99 days) followed by Ma-h isolate (6.27 days). In treatment of females, the LT50 was 5.17 days for Ma88 isolate and 5.42 days for Ma29 isolate. The result revealed that males were greater susceptible than females when exposed to Ma-h isolate, while the females were higher susceptible to all local isolates. The results also demonstrated that Ma88 isolate was the most capability in analyzing the culture medium to obtain the growth requirements, especially carbon element from chitin medium as only source with significant differences from other fungal isolates, this was compatible with its virulence against adults. All fungal isolates were statistically equivalent in analysis of the protein source in culture medium.