Stored-product insects can cause postharvest losses, estimated from up to 9% in developed countries to 20% or more in developing countries. There is much interest in alternatives to conventional insecticides for controlling stored-product insects because of insecticide loss due to regulatory action and insect resistance, and because of increasing consumer demand for product that is free of insects and insecticide residues. Sanitation is perhaps the first line of defense for grain stored at farms or elevators and for food-processing and warehouse facilities. Some of the most promising biorational management tools for farm-stored grain are temperature management and use of natural enemies. New tools for computer-assisted decision-making and insect sampling at grain elevators appear most promising. Processing facilities and warehouses usually rely on trap captures for decision-making, a process that needs further research to optimize.

Insecticides are an invaluable pest management tool and anthropogenic stressors of widespread environmental occurrence that are subject to biased perceptions based on the targeted application, market value of use, and regulatory requirements. As a result, short-term and simplistic efforts focusing on lethal effects toward individual species and populations prevail. Holistic and comprehensive studies exploring rather common sublethal insecticide exposures are rare, particularly considering their potential role in structuring populations and communities in diverse environmental settings and potentially interfering in a range of ecological interactions. Studies on insecticide resistance, for example, do not go beyond population-based studies, disregarding temporal and spatial effects in the associated community, and rarely considering the whole of sublethal exposure. Some of these knowledge gaps are here recognized and explored.

Plodia interpunctella (Hu¨bner), the Indian meal moth, is a worldwide insect pest of stored-products and processed food commodities. It can infest a variety of products and is perhaps the most economically important insect pest of processed food. In this review, we summarize the biology of P. interpunctella, discuss oviposition and development in relation to temperature, environment and food source, examine studies involving sampling and detection, describe various aspects of integrated control, summarize the current knowledge regarding management of P. interpunctella, and address potential areas for new research. The use of reduced-risk insecticides, non-chemical control, targeted pest management through spatial analysis and other means of identifying specific locations of infestations, and computer models that simulate population growth, are examples of some of those new areas of research.

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