Mass-Reared Arthropods’ (Bigler, 1991), in
Wageningen, The Netherlands, formed the
starting-point for a heated discussion among
producers of natural enemies and scientists
on how to approach quality control in the
commercial setting at that time.
A series of workshops, some partly and
others largely funded by the EC, followed in
Horsholm, Denmark, in 1992, Rimini, Italy,
in 1993 (Nicoli et al., 1993; van Lenteren et al.,
1993), Evora, Portugal, in 1994 (van
Lenteren, 1994), Antibes, France, in 1996 (van
Lenteren, 1996) and in Barcelona, Spain, in
1997 (van Lenteren, 1998). As a result of
these meetings, quality control guidelines
were written for more than 20 species of nat-
ural enemies, and these have been tested and
adopted by commercial producers of
biological control agents in Europe (van
Lenteren, 1998; van Lenteren and
Tommasini, 1999). The guidelines cover
features that are relatively easy to determine
in the laboratory (e.g. emergence, sex ratio,
lifespan, fecundity, adult size,
predation/parasitism rate). Work is now
focused on the development of: (i) flight
tests; and (ii) a test relating these laboratory
characteristics to field efficiency.
Recently, the International Biocontrol
Manufacturers Association (IBMA) has taken
the initiative to update and further develop
quality control guidelines and fact sheets.
Their first meeting, with the participation of
the most important European mass produc-
ers of natural enemies and representatives of
mass producers from Canada and the USA
under the umbrella of the Association of
Natural Bio-control Producers (ANBP), took
place in September 2000 in The Netherlands
and was followed up by a meeting in North
America in 2001. The quality control guide-
lines for more than 30 species of natural
enemies developed so far are presented in
Chapter 19.
State of affairs concerning application of
quality control worldwideCurrently, quality control guidelines as pre-
sented in Chapter 19 are applied by several
companies that mass-produce natural ene-
mies in Europe and North America.
Depending on the size of the company and
the number of natural-enemy species they
produce, they may apply from one to more
than 20 tests. Through correspondence and
literature search, the following information
was obtained for other countries.
In the former Soviet Union, quite a lot of
work was done during the 1980s on quality
control of Trichogramma, a parasitoid that
was used on several million hectares for con-
trol of various lepidopteran pests. References
to this work, as well as examples of USSR
quality control programmes, can be found in
a Russian paper in the Proceedings of the
First International Symposium on
Trichogramma and other egg parasitoids
(Voegele, 1982), in three papers authored by
Russian researchers in the Proceedings of the
Second International Symposium on
Trichogramma and other egg parasites
(Voegele et al., 1988) and several papers pub-
lished in later proceedings of this working
group (two papers in Wajnberg and Vinson
(1991), third symposium; five papers in
Wajnberg (1995), fourth symposium). Most
of the elements of quality control discussed
in these papers are included in the current
quality-control guidelines described in
Chapter 19 of this book, with the exception
of an interesting test to evaluate searching
and dispersal ability in a maze in the labora-
tory, developed by Greenberg (1991). This
test was later used by Silva et al.(2000) to
measure the performance ofTrichogramma in
the laboratory and to predict its dispersal
capacity in the field. Disappointingly, it
appeared that the laboratory bioassay with
the maze did not properly predict the disper-
sal capacity of Trichogramma.
Information on quality control of mass-
produced natural enemies used in China is
not easy to trace, although inundative and
seasonal inoculative forms of biological
control are used on about 1 million ha.
Aspects of quality control are described in
two Chinese papers in the Proceedings of
the First International Symposium on
Trichogramma and other egg parasitoids
(Voegele, 1982), in about ten papers
authored by Chinese researchers in the
Proceedings of the Second International6 J.C. van Lenteren