Pacific Pests, Pathogens and Weeds - Online edition

Pacific Pests, Pathogens & Weeds

Guava bud moth (381)


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Summary

  • Restricted. In Oceania, Australia, Fiji, French Polynesia, New Zealand, Northern Mariana Islands, Samoa. Hosts are guavas, Malaya apple - members of Myrtle family.
  • Damage: larvae roll and web shoots and kill them; also eat skin of the fruit; larvae are yellowish below and grey above; head yellowish-brown. Adult, greyish brown forewings with speckling, pale brown fringed hindwings. Serious in guava plantations.
  • Natural enemies: none reported, but wasp parasitoids are likely.
  • Cultural control: use finger and thumb to squash and kill larvae; plant flowering plants inside and around plantations to attract natural enemies.
  • Chemical control: biorational pesticides (i) botanicals (chillies, neem, derris, pyrethrum); (ii) microbials e.g., spinosad, Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis subspecies kurstaki) against young caterpillars; (iii) synthetic insecticides are registered on guava, e.g., malathion (USA), carbaryl, dimethoate (Australia), but are best avoided as they will destroy natural enemies. Spot-spray damaged shoots rather than 'blanket' spray.

Common Name

Guava bud moth. Swaine (1971)1 refers to the moth as a 'webworm'.

Scientific Name

Strepsicrates ejectana. It was previously known as Strepsicrates holotephras. However, there is some doubt whether these two species are the same based on male genitalia, which are used by taxonomists to differentiate between species of Strepsicrates. A revision of the genus is needed. The moth was first described from Fiji. It is a moth of the Tortricidae.


AUTHORS Grahame Jackson & Mani Mua
1Swaine G (1971) Agricultural Zoology in Fiji. Her Majesty's Stationery Office. London. Information on the taxonomy of the moth from Todd Gilligan (see also Gilligan TM,  Baixeras J, Brown JW (2018) T@RTS: Online World Catalogue of the Tortricidae (Ver. 4.0). (http://www.tortricid.net/catalogue.asp); and from Carillo D et al. (2017) Guava pests and beneficial insects. UF IFAS Extension, Florida. (https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/ig072).

Produced with support from the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research under project HORT/2016/185: Responding to emerging pest and disease threats to horticulture in the Pacific islands, implemented by the University of Queensland and the Pacific Community.

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