The sunflower moth is a major pest of commercially-grown sunflowers in North America particularly in Texas, California and Nebraska. It is migratory in much of the range including the southern fringe of Canada. The female moth deposits its eggs within or among the florets of the sunflower inflorescence and the developing larvae feed on the flower parts and ultimately on mature seeds. If large numbers of moths are present at the time when cultivated sunflowers are at the flowering stage, applications of insecticides may be necessary to avoid severe economic losses. A simple and efficient method of monitoring populations of sunflower moths is desired to enable growers to determine whether spraying will be required. A complicating factor in detecting sunflower moths is their susceptibility to wind migration. In any region the pest may be entirely absent one day and abundant the next, so that intensive and continuous monitoring is required for detection and control. With a chemical attractant, monitoring moth populations, mass trapping of male moths, and widespread disruption of sunflower moth mating (by indiscriminate dissemination), should be possible.
Light traps, frequently used for moth sampling, are non-specific and relatively ineffective for sunflower moths. The use of traps baited with live female sunflower moths necessitates the availability of a laboratory culture of moths as a source of females which would be an expensive and impractical method for widespread monitoring.
Tests have shown that insect traps baited with female H. electellum moths have a strong attraction for male moths of this species indicating that a sex pheromone attraction is involved (G. L. Teetes and N. M. Randolph, Journal of Economic Entomology 63: 1358-1359, 1970). No chemical components of the attractant were identified. Other workers have found that a mixture of Z-9,E-12-tetradecadien-1-yl acetate and Z-9,E-12-tetradecadien-1-ol is involved in the pheromone system of the Indian meal moth Plodia interpunctella (Hubner). In this pheromone system, the latter compound served to inhibit the response of male almond moths.