Abstract
PLANT breeders have no objective means of determining feeding quality of new cereal lines early in a breeding programme. A laboratory test that is simple, inexpensive, and requires only a few grams of sample is therefore highly desirable. Insects have been used to assay both food and fodder1–5, and so it seemed that the confused flour beetle, Tribolium confusum, which normally lives in dry ground cereal, might be a suitable organism for assessing feeding value of cereals. Rate of larval development was the major criterion.
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LOSCHIAVO, S., MCGINNIS, A. & METCALFE, D. Nutritive value of Barley Varieties assessed with the Confused Flour Beetle. Nature 224, 288 (1969). https://doi.org/10.1038/224288a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/224288a0
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