In 1995, the weevils Neochetina eichhorniae and
N. bruchi were introduced separately in China from
USA and Argentina (Ding et al., 2001). In order to
evaluate the safety of weevils, 46 different plant spe-
cies of economical importance were selected, in-
cluding also ornamentals and some wild aquatic
plants in Dianchi Lake, Yunnan Province for studies
of host specificity. As a result none of the 46 species
were found to be edible by N. eichhorniae (Liu et al.,
1997). Similar results were obtained with the subse-
quent experiments conducted in various provinces,
which clearly indicate that the weevils are safe to be
used for the control of water hyacinth in China