GPA – India’s leading pest management distributor: As a leading Indian distributor of well-known international pest management brands, GPA exclusively markets the products of Singapore’s Pestroniks Innovations, Pte. Ltd., Denmark’s RodeXit N.A. ApS, and the United States of America’s Trece, Inc.
GPA starts distributing Fuji Flavors products in India in 2024: In 2024, GPA started distributing the Ecomone range of pheromone traps and lures (including the New Serrico Trap) manufactured by Japan’s Fuji Flavors Co. Ltd. (Fuji Flavors) to Indian customers.
Who are Fuji Flavors?
The Japan Tobacco (JT) group established Fuji Flavors in 1971 to research, develop, and manufacture flavours and insect monitoring products.
Fuji Flavors became the first company to synthesise cigarette beetle pheromone: In 1980, Fuji Flavors became the world’s first company to synthesise the cigarette beetle pheromone at its laboratory.
In 1981, Fuji Flavors introduced the Serrico Trap, containing pheromone and kairomone attractants to trap cigarette beetles on the glued surface of a cardboard trap.
The Serrico Trap has been a leading cigarette beetle monitoring trap over the past four decades and has been used in more than one hundred countries worldwide.
In recent years, Fuji Flavors introduced the New Serrico Trap to replace the original Serrico Trap.
How is the New Serrico Trap different from the original Serrico Trap?
In the original Serrico Trap, the user had to place two different attractant tablets to monitor cigarette beetles. One tablet had the pheromone to attract male cigarette beetles, and the second tablet had food attractants to attract both male and female cigarette beetles.
In it’s efforts to make the Serrico Trap easier for its users to handle, Fuji Flavors combined the two tablets of the original Serrico Trap. They launched the New Serrico Trap with just one tablet to attract male and female cigarette beetles.
Why is the New Serrico Trap highly popular for monitoring cigarette beetles?
Below, we list the top seven reasons that make the New Serrico Trap highly popular for monitoring cigarette beetles globally.
- It attracts male and female adult cigarette beetles, indicating their presence, location and population.
- It has higher catch rates and catches more cigarette beetles than other traps.
- You can use it horizontally or vertically, even in dusty spaces, by using its side flaps.
- It’s design allows use in limited space, like inside pallets or below stored-product racks.
- It is easy to assemble by removing the release paper from the glue and placing an attractant lure.
- It consistently captures cigarette beetles to highlight and pinpoint their presence even at very low population levels.
- It is a low-cost device that detects cigarette beetles, alerting users to prevent the pest’s damage to food, tobacco and artefacts.
Which products do cigarette beetles infest?
Cigarette beetles are a major pest of tobacco in the cigarette, cigar, and other packaged tobacco industries.
As cigarette beetles are omnivorous, they infest many stored foods, including cereals, flours, dry mixes, dried fruits, cereals, cocoa, coffee beans, herbs, spices, nuts, and dry pet food.
Cigarette beetles also feed on dead insects, dried fish, animal meal, and remains of dead animals.
Cigarette beetles also infest non-food materials like dried plants, herbarium specimens, dried floral arrangements, potpourri, decorative grapevine wreaths, prescription drugs and pills, medicinal herbs, pinned insects, furniture stuffing, paper-mâché, and bookbinding glue.
Why are cigarette beetles a major pest?
Cigarette beetle larvae feed on a range of dry foods and non-food products and directly damage the items they feed on.
Cigarette beetles contaminate products they infest through the presence of adults, beetles, larvae, pupae, cocoons, frass (or insect faecal material), and insect parts.
Cigarette beetle larvae also damage packaging by chewing through paper, cardboard and metallic foil.
Due to their short life cycle of six to eight weeks, cigarette beetles can rapidly multiply on a product they infest and extensively damage it. As they fly long distances, cigarette beetles can move to uninfested products and infest them even though such products were in a clean environment before infestation.
Where can the New Serrico Trap be used?
As cigarette beetles are widespread pests, they can occur in spice and herb factories, cereal processors, flour mills, bakeries, cigarette factories, pet food factories, breakfast cereal manufacturers, snack food plants, chocolate factories, confectionaries, distribution centres, and retail stores. All such places are ideal for using the New Serrico Trap to monitor the cigarette beetle population.
Even museums and conservatories benefit from using the New Serrico Trap as cigarette beetles commonly infest artefacts, dry preserved plants, herbaria, dead insects, and even glue on old books.
Integrated pest management (IPM) of cigarette beetles: Cigarette beetles are widespread pests in numerous food and non-food products, making them difficult for pest management professionals to manage.
While controlling cigarette beetles is possible by fumigation and heat treatments, such interventions are costly and must be looked upon only as a last resort.
Monitoring cigarette beetles using pheromone traps like the New Serrico Trap is an effective IPM tool that can help manage the pest.
Monitoring cigarette beetles using the New Serrico Trap: The New Serrico Trap is very useful in monitoring cigarette beetles, which can be used in manufacturing or storage areas to monitor their presence.
New Serrico Traps are also used in shipping containers to detect the presence of cigarette beetles in the shipment during transit.
New Serrico Traps are to be placed 5-10 metres apart and 1.5 metres above the floor for monitoring.
The New Serrico trap has a provision for recording the cigarette beetle catch on the back of the trap.
Weekly catches of the trap indicate the presence and level of cigarette beetles in the space being monitored.
After the count of cigarette beetles, it is important to initiate action to identify the source of the infestation.
Cigarette beetle-infested products must be treated to control the cigarette beetles, or the infested products discarded to avoid becoming an infestation source.
Availability of New Serrico Traps in India: GPA is an authorised distributor of Fuji Flavors and supplies the latter’s New Serrico and other Ecomone range pheromone traps and lures in India.
New Serrico Traps are available in smaller packs of ten traps and ten lures and larger packs of one hundred traps and one hundred lures and two hundred traps and two hundred lures.
Contact us for your New Serrico and other Fuji Flavors pheromone traps and lures requirements.
