A New Gelling Technique and Improved Calcium-Alginate Medium for Rearing Spodoptera littoralis12

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Abstract
As we have shown previously (Moore and Navon 1969, 1971), sodium alginate can replace agar as a gelling agent in insect media. The main difficulty in the preparation of these media is to avoid breaking the gel. This problem is solved by slowing down the sodium-calcium exchange so that the actual nutrients can be dispersed uniformly before setting is complete. So far, in insect media, this has been accomplished by inclusion of glucono-delta-lactone, a compound slowly converting to an acid and thus progressively ionizing the insoluble calcium salt, or use of sodium hexametaphosphate, a sequestering agent retarding the release of calcium ions.

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