Abstract: This paper studied the effects of artificial diets on the female Propylea japonica’s feeding and body composition.And the results indicated that the feeding amount of ladybird increased sharply at the initial days after eclosion, and then decreased gradually.The feeding amount and the consumption index (CI) of the beetles fed on cotton aphid were three to four times higher than that of the beetles fed with artificial diets.The feeding amount of the beetles fed with diet containing sucrose was significantly higher than that of the beetles fed with diets without sucrose, which proved that the sucrose had the function of increasing food intake for Propylea japonica; As to the relative growth rate(RGR) and approximate digestibility(AD) , there existed significant difference between the control and the beetles fed with artificial diets, due to the unbalance of the nutrition or existing some antinutritional facts in the artificial diets probably.While the Efficiency of conversion of ingested food (ECI) and the efficiency of conversion of digested food (ECD) in the control were significantly higher than that in beetles fed with artificial diets, which was probably the strategy of the insects whose food intake was low to survive.Furthermore, the results indicated that the dietary sucrose could improve AD, ECI and ECD of the artificial diets.As to the effects of the artificial diets on the body composition, the results showed that contents of moisture, crude protein and crude fat of female Propylea japonica were 58.77%,15.93% and 11.30%,respectively.And the analysis of the female fatty acids indicated that unsaturated fatty acid (USFA) was the major contents.In monounsaturated fatty acids (MUFA) and the polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA), the highest contents were oleic acid (1C18 n-9) and linoleic acid (2C18 n-6) respectively.The dietary sucrose could increase the content of crude protein in Propylea japonica,and the dietary olive oil could increase the content of crude fat significantly.The USFA content (72.70%) of the beetles fed with artificial diets was higher than that of control (58.00%).Supplementing 0.5% olive oil in diet could remarkably increase the content of USFA,specially of oleic acid (1C18 n-9), due to the rich oleic acid content in olive oil.

Key words: artificial diets, feeding, body composition, Propylea japonica (thunberg), artificial diets, feeding, body composition