Multispectral imaging for quality control of laboratory‐reared Anastrepha fraterculus (Diptera: Tephritidae) pupae

Abstract

The sterile insect technique (SIT) has been widely used to suppress several fruit fly species. In southern Brazil, millions of sterile flies of the South American fruit fly, Anastrepha fraterculus Wiedemann (Dipetra: Tephritidae), will be produced in a mass‐rearing facility called MOSCASUL to suppress wild populations from commercial apple orchards. In spite of standard rearing conditions, the quality of pupal batches can be inconsistent due to various factors. The quantification of poor quality material (e.g. empty pupae, dead pupae or larvae) is necessary to track down rearing issues, and pupal samples must be taken randomly and evaluated individually. To speed up the inspection of pupal samples by replacing the manual testing with the mechanized one, this study assessed a multispectral imaging (MSI) system to distinguish the variations in quality of A. fraterculus pupae and to quantify the variations based on reflectance patterns. Image acquisition and analyses were performed by the VideometerLab4 system on 7‐d‐old pupae by using 19 wavelengths ranging from 375 to 970 nm. The image representing the near infrared wavelength of 880 nm clearly distinguished among high‐quality pupae and the other four classes (i.e. low‐quality pupae, empty pupae, dead pupae and larvae). The blind validation test indicated that the MSI system can classify the fruit fly pupae with high accuracy. Therefore, MSI‐based classification of A. fraterculus pupae can be used for future pupal quality assessments of fruit flies in mass‐rearing facilities.

Identification of host plant volatile stimulants of Anastrepha fraterculus male courtship behavior

“…Due to the economic impact of A. fraterculus, diverse control methods are under development, including the sterile insect technique (SIT) (Cladera et al, 2014;Mastrangelo et al, 2018Mastrangelo et al, , 2019Mastrangelo et al, , 2021De León et al, 2021). This technique involves the field release of mass-reared sterile males, which must achieve mating with wild females to compromise the reproductive output of the wild population (Knipling, 1955).…”

Integrating Optical Imaging Tools for Rapid and Non-invasive Characterization of Seed Quality: Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) and Carrot (Daucus carota L.) as Study Cases

“…Multispectral imaging is a non-destructive technology able to integrate the conventional vision and spectroscopy technique to obtain at same time spatial and spectral information of an object (Shrestha et al, 2015 ; Mastrangelo et al, 2019 ; França-Silva et al, 2020 ), with accurate measurements of uniform and non-homogeneous samples. Advanced multispectral imaging systems have the great advantage to assess simultaneously multiple components, providing information about texture, color, shape, size and chemical composition for quality assurance.…”

Effect of Ultraviolet-B Radiating Drosophila melanogaster as Host on the Quality of Trichopria drosophilae, a Pupal Parasitoid of Drosophila suzukii

“…In the process of mass rearing parasitoids, a high rate of dead pupae will increase reproduction cost [ 89 , 90 , 91 ]. At the same time, the collected pupae will be wasted, and reproduction efficiency will be reduced [ 92 ]. If we can streamline the collection of pupae from D. suzukii , we can then consider using it as a host to try to minimize these losses.…”