Image-assisted assessment of the efficiency of comperiella calauanica as parasitoid of aspidiotus rigidus in Zamboanga Sibugay

• Main Authors: Ilustre, Jona Marie Miranda, Maiquez, Shannen Faye Marcayda
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2023
• Subjects: Aspidiotus destructor > Philippines; Biology
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etdb_bio/39; https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/context/etdb_bio/article/1052/viewcontent/2023_Ilustre_Maiquez_Image_assisted_assessment_of_the_efficiency_of_Comperiella_Full_text.pdf
• Institution: De La Salle University

The issue of coconut scale infestation has been of paramount concern for the coconut sector because of its crucial economic significance. Banana oil and insecticides are two of the treatments that have been administered to combat the issue. Nonetheless, the infestation still persisted. Comperiella caluanica's discovery has raised the prospect of using biological control to eradicate A. rigidus. However, subsequent study has been hampered or delayed down due to the strenuous effort of manually counting samples. In this work, samples from certain Zamboanga Sibugay sites were evaluated to determine the C. calauanica parasitization levels using an image-based application, labelme. Overall, the percent parasitization found in the selected sites was 79.83%. Percent parasitization was determined to be at an efficient level on both the barangay and municipal levels. Locations that received insecticide treatment of dinotefuran, on the other hand, displayed higher CSI than untreated locations. This demonstrates that the greater CSI count on treated sites indicates the adverse impacts of applying pesticides on the parasitic effectivity of C. calauanica, whereas the lower CSI in untreated sites illustrates the success of C. calauanica in reducing the CSI. Overall, the results of this study proves the effectiveness of the parasitoid in controlling the CSI population. Utilization of C. calauanica in combating the cocolisap infestation across the Philippines is proven to be beneficial and highly advocated to the Philippine coconut industry. The researchers recommend further studies on image-based assessment on the parasitization of C. calauanica on A. rigidus to supply a broader database to assist artificial intelligence training.