The morphology and harmfulness of jujube tortoise wax scale

Date turtle wax scale belongs to Homoptera, wax scale family, also known as Japanese turtle wax scale, date lice. Adult reddish, 0.9 mm long, compound eyes black, antenna whip. The wings are white and transparent, with two main veins. The female insect is oval, similar to tortoise shell; the egg is oval, pale yellow in the early stage and purple-red in the late stage; the nymph is oval and reddish, and the nymph spreads by wind in the early stage and soon fixes damage on the leaves; pupae, only male insects pupate under the scale shell. The pupae are elliptical.

The insect fixed nymph and female adult on branches, leaves and fruits to suck juice, and the discharge induced the spread of coal fungus, which made branches, leaves and fruits covered with black mold, directly affecting photosynthesis, resulting in a large number of fruit drop and tree decline, not only causing yield reduction in the current year, but also affecting tree vigor for several years. So insect is one of the main pests of jujube tree.

Life Habits and Control Methods of Chinese Date Turtle Cerococcus

The insect has one generation a year and overwinters as fertilized female adults on 1-2 year old branches. In April of the following year, when the tree germinates, it begins to suck the sap and enlarge the insect body. The eggs begin to lay in the middle of May, and a female can lay up to 3900 eggs. The first ten days of July is the peak period of egg hatching. Males pupate in mid-August. Male adults emerge, climb out of the wax shell, fly during the day activities, looking for female mating. Male adults have phototaxis. After mating, female adults transfer from leaves to branches, especially like to settle down on the heads of new dates.

Control methods:

(1) Combined with pruning in winter, cutting off insect branches and burning them intensively.

(2) Protect natural enemies, such as external parasitic insect Pteropylae longissimus, internal parasitic insect Pteropylae, followed by ladybugs, predatory insects, etc.

(3) Chemical control, such as spraying 50% wettable carbaryl 500 times solution and 25% quinofos emulsion 1000-2000 times solution at the peak of nymph hatching.