Non-destructive quantitative determination of at least one performance indicator in rearing a population of live insects in a complex medium

Abstract

The present invention relates to a non-destructive method for quantitatively determining at least one performance indicator in rearing a population of live insects in a complex medium, the method comprising the following steps: (i) a step of irradiating the complex medium comprising the population of live insects with a light comprising one or more wavelengths within a range from 420 nm to 2500 nm, (ii) a step of collecting the light reflected by the complex medium to obtain a reflectance spectrum of the medium; and (iii) a step of correlating said spectrum with a quantitative value of at least one performance indicator. The present invention also relates to the uses of the method and to the use of a spectrophotometer to quantitatively determine at least one performance indicator of a population of live insects in a complex medium.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.