Finding plant cultivars that are resistant or tolerant against lepidopteran pests, takes time, effort and is costly. We present here a high throughput leaf-disk consumption assay system, to screen plants for resistance or chemicals for their deterrence. A webcam capturing images at regular intervals can follow the feeding activities of 150 larvae placed into individual cages. We developed a computer program running under an open source image analysis program to analyze and measure the surface of each leaf disk over time. We further developed new statistical procedures to analyze the time course of the feeding activities of the larvae and to compare them between treatments. As a test case, we compared how European corn borer larvae respond to a commercial antifeedant containing azadirachtin, and to quinine, which is a bitter alkaloid for many organisms. As expected, increasing doses of azadirachtin reduced and delayed feeding. However, quinine was poorly effective at the range of concentrations tested (10^–5 M to 10^–2 M). The model cage, the camera holder, the plugins, and the R scripts are freely available, and can be modified according to the users’ needs.

寻找对鳞翅目害虫具有抗性或耐受性的植物品种需要时间、精力并且成本高昂。我们在此介绍一种高通量叶盘消耗测定系统，用于筛选植物的抗性或化学物质的威慑力。网络摄像头定期捕捉图像，可以跟踪放入单独笼子中的 150 只幼虫的摄食活动。我们开发了一个在开源图像分析程序下运行的计算机程序，以随着时间的推移分析和测量每个叶盘的表面。我们进一步开发了新的统计程序来分析幼虫摄食活动的时间过程并在处理之间进行比较。作为一个测试案例，我们比较了欧洲玉米螟幼虫对含有印苦楝素的商业拒食剂和奎宁（对许多生物体来说是一种苦味生物碱）的反应。正如预期的那样，增加印楝素的剂量会减少和延迟进食。然而，奎宁在测试浓度范围（10 ^–5  M 至 10 ^–2  M）下效果不佳。模型笼、相机支架、插件和R脚本都是免费提供的，并且可以根据用户的需求进行修改。