Control Methods for Edible Mushroom Diseases and Darkling Beetle Pests

The adult darkling beetle is black and glossy, with an oval body 0.8-1.2 cm long and 4.5-6.0 mm wide. The antennae have 11 segments, and the eyes are concave and kidney-shaped. The pronotum is overly long, densely covered with coarse punctures, with the front margin slightly concave and the rear margin slightly protruding.

The front margin of the abdominal sternite bears a dense row of short reddish-brown hairs. The scutellum is approximately an isosceles triangle. The elytra are long-ovate, and the surface of each elytron is formed into 9 rows of longitudinal grooves by coarse punctures. The 3 pairs of legs are almost equal in length; the femora all bear small punctures; the tibiae and tarsi are densely covered with brown hairs; the tips of the tibiae have 2 brownish-black spurs, and there is a pair of claws. The abdomen has 5 segments; the middle of the first and second segments bears reddish-brown fine hairs, and the end of the 5th segment bears a dense row of reddish-brown hairs. The larva is 14-16 mm long and 1.8-2.0 mm wide, with a hard body wall. The dorsal surface of the body is reddish-brown, the abdomen is light brown, the head is reddish-brown, and the mandibles are dark brown. Below the antennae and extending to the labrum, there is a row of U-shaped white hairs. The abdomen shows 9 visible segments, with 1 pair of spiracles on each side of segments 1-8. At the intersegmental membrane at the end of each dorsal plate, fine longitudinal striae form a transverse band, and on the ventral surface, the end of each segment bears glossy longitudinal striae.

Damage symptoms: Adults crawl quickly and are not good at flying; when disturbed, they feign death. They avoid light and prefer moisture, and are often most active at night, feeding on mushroom flesh. Infested shiitake mushrooms and wood ear mushrooms show notched or gnawed damage. The larvae often damage young wood ear mushrooms and young mushrooms, causing young wood ear mushrooms to ooze and die.

Control methods: During harvesting of wood ear mushrooms and mushrooms, manually capture and kill adults and larvae at any time. From March to April each year, spray an insecticide once at the wood ear (mushroom) yard to reduce the pest source. From May to June, during the peak period when new and old adults overlap, spray with 1000-2000 times dilution of 2.5% deltamethrin, 40% omethoate, 80% dichlorvos, or 500-1000 times dilution of crystalline trichlorfon, once every 10 days, with good control results.