The quality of biological control agents used in augmentative releases may be affected by rearing conditions due to inbreeding or laboratory adaptation, or to phenotypic effects of the rearing environment. We hypothesized that individuals from a wild population would be in better body condition and kill more prey than individuals from a commercially produced population. We caught wild Orius majusculus (Reuter) in a maize field and compared their initial body mass, survival, and prey reduction capacity to commercially produced O. majusculus. Predation capacity and survival were compared in short-term Petri dish tests with Frankliniella tenuicornis (Uzel) thrips, Ephestia kuehniella (Zeller) moth eggs, or Rhopalosiphum padi (L.) aphids as prey, and in longer-term outdoor mesocosms containing live seedling wheat grass with thrips or aphids as prey. Wild-caught O. majusculus were typically heavier and overall had higher survival during tests than commercially produced O. majusculus. Females were heavier than males and typically killed more prey. However, we found no difference between wild-caught and commercially produced individuals on prey reduction, neither in Petri dishes nor in mesocosms. Our study suggests that commercially produced O. majusculus have lower body condition than wild O. majusculus due to their lower body mass and survival, but that this does not have any negative effect on the number of pest prey killed over the timelines and conditions of our tests. Commercially produced O. majusculus thus did not have a lower impact on pest prey numbers than wild-caught individuals and therefore had similar biological control value under our study conditions.

由于近亲繁殖或实验室适应，或饲养环境的表型效应，可能会影响用于增强释放的生物控制剂的质量。我们假设来自野生种群的个体比来自商业生产种群的个体身体状况更好，杀死的猎物更多。我们在玉米田中捕获了野生大黄鹬(Reuter)，并将它们的初始体重、存活率和猎物减少能力与商业生产的大黄鹬进行了比较。捕食能力和存活率在短期培养皿试验中与Frankliniella tenuicornis (Uzel) 蓟马、Ephestia kuehniella (Zeller) 蛾卵或Rhopalosiphum padi (L.) 蚜虫作为猎物，在长期户外中宇宙中含有以蓟马或蚜虫为猎物的活苗小麦草。野生捕获的O. majusculus通常比商业生产的O. majusculus更重，并且在测试期间总体存活率更高。雌性比雄性重，通常杀死更多的猎物。然而，我们发现野生捕获的个体和商业生产的个体在减少猎物方面没有区别，无论是在培养皿中还是在中宇宙中。我们的研究表明，商业生产的O. majusculus的身体状况低于野生O. majusculus由于它们的体重和存活率较低，但这对在我们测试的时间线和条件下杀死的害虫猎物数量没有任何负面影响。因此，商业生产的O. majusculus对害虫猎物数量的影响并不低于野生捕获的个体，因此在我们的研究条件下具有相似的生物控制价值。