Sitophilus granarius responses to blends of five groups of cereal kernels and one group of plant volatiles

• Sitophilus granarius display innate behaviors in response to blends of VOC.
• Blends of VOC are of importance for the positive or negative reaction of insects.
• Blends are attractants at low and repellents at high concentrations.
• VOC even not typical for cereal kernels can work as repellents for insects.

In this paper we report the behavioral responses of granary weevil to 6 blends of cereal volatiles. Four doses (1 ng min−1, 10 ng min−1, 100 ng min−1, and 1000 ng min−1 in 50 μl of hexane applied on filter paper) were tested. A Y-tube experiment revealed that females and males of Sitophilus granaries were attracted to the blend 1, 4, and 5 at concentrations of 10 and 100 ng min−1, 10 ng min−1, 1 and 10 ng min−1, respectively. Moreover, females and males of granary weevil were not attracted to any concentration of blend 2 and 3. Yet, the weevil females and males were repelled by the highest concentrations (100 and 1000 ng min−1) for all tested blends, except of blend 1, where concentration 100 ng min−1 was an attractant for both sexes. Moreover, females and males were repelled by three tested concentrations of blend 6 (10, 100 and 1000 ng min−1).