G. FLORICA
Central Laboratory for Phytosanitary Quarantine Bucharest, Romania

INTRODUCTION
Since 1995 the monitoring of Diabrotica virgifera virgifera Le Conte has been carried out by the ministry of agriculture, food and forestry through the central laboratory for phytosanitary quarantine and the county phytosanitary departments. The first find of D. virgifera was made in 1996 at Nadlac, near Hungarian border. In the following years , the pest has spread towards the north-east and the population levels have increased, especially in  Caras-Severin, Timis, Arad and Mehedinti counties.

METHOD
In 2001 the WCR monitoring system was organized in 22 counties (10 non-infested counties and 12 WCR infested counties), from 25 June till the end of September . We used Pheromone traps (Csalomon^®) and Pherocon AM traps in 21 counties and Romanian  Pheromone  traps in one county  (Bistrita Nasaud). The traps were placed in 202 sites: 120 sites in infested counties and 82 sites in non infested counties. The pheromone traps (traps and capsules) were changed every 30 days and Pherocon traps  every 15 days. All the traps were checked every 7 days and the results were recorded on the survey sheets.

RESULTS
This year D. virgifera was trapped in 15 out of 22 counties, ( much more three counties than in 2000). The new infested counties are: Sibiu – 325 captures, Mures- 14 captures and Bistrita Nasaud – 151 captures. The pest is spreading north- east, along the river Mures and in the southern part of the country no further spread  was  recorded . The farthest point of  spread toward north- east is approximately 400 km away from Nadlac (the first site with captures in 1996). The attached map shows the spread of D. virgifera in Romania from 1996 to 2001.

The WCR captures are presented in the  attached table.  The total number of captured adults was 29,666 (28,129 on the pheromone traps and 1,537 on Multigard traps). The average value of captures in this year, was 146.9 beetles/ installed trap. The highest population density was in Timis county (1,312 beetles/ trap).  WCR population have been increased considerable in counties Arad (from 377.7 beetles/trap in 2000 to 909.8 beetles/ trap in this year) and Timis (from 840.1 beetles/trap in 2000 to 1,312 beetles/ trap in  this year). At country level most beetles were caught in August: 17,574 beetles (59%) while in July were caught only 7,539 beetles (25%).

The monitoring of larval damages have been performed in the continuous corn fields from 12 counties which were infested in 2000. This year, the larval damages have been observed  in counties Arad, Caras-Severin and Timis, but not at economic level.