Improving Effectiveness of Measurements for Seed Resistance to Maize Weevil123

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Abstract
Grain harvested from a southeastern United States-adapted, full-season corn, Zea mays L., hybrid, which was allowed to open-pollinate, was separated into 3 kernel sizes (large, medium, and small) and tested at 3 sample weights (15, 25, and 35 g) each under 4 infestation levels (10, 20, 30, and 40) of adult Sitophilus zeamais Motschulsky. Seed size did not affect resistance measurements because it appeared that samples of constant weight tended to self-correct for total seed surface area, an important factor affecting oviposition, when seed size varied. Samples infested with only 10 weevils exhibited large sampling errors, which were attributed to the high probability of obtaining few or no female weevils in randomly drawn samples of low weevil number per sample. Both sample weight loss per adult and number of progeny per adult provided consistent measures of resistance and a good separation of treatment means. These 2 characteristics were highly correlated (r = 0.97) which indicated that either would provide an adequate measure of resistance. Based on the experimental results, use of at least 20 adult weevils to infest test samples containing at least 1 g of seed/weevil should produce reliable results when infesting with unsexed weevils.

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