Abstract:Ostrinia furnacalis (Guene) overwinters as diapausing larva in northern China. The survival of overwintering larvae affects the first generation population density of next year. Cold hardiness of diapausing overwintering larvae plays an important role in their overwintering survival. The cold hardiness of diapausing larvae of 4 field populations from Jilin Province, i.e. Dunhua univoltine (DH1), Gongzhuling univoltine (GZL1), Gongzhuling bivoltine (GZL2), and Taonan bivoltine (TN2), were measured by exposing testing their supercooling point (SCP) and freezing point (FP). Cold tolerance was measured by testing the survival of diapausing larvae at supercooled temperature. The results showed that the SCPs of O.furnacalis varied from -28.5℃ to -27.0℃, the lowest SCPs of individual could be as low as -36.4℃. There were significant differences in SCPs among the four populations. GZL1 performed the lowest SCP, whereas GZL2 performed the highest. The survival of diapausing larvae at supercooled low sub-zero temperature -40℃ were 45.6%, 58.8%, 41.8%, and 58.3% for GZL1, TN2, DH1, and GZL2 populations, respectively. There was not significant difference in larvae survival of supercooled populations and that of non-supercooled original population at post-diapausing developmental stage. These results suggested that O.furnacalis diapausing larva populations could take advantage of supercooling, and part of them also perform freeze tolerance, indicating that O.furnacalis performed two strategies for survival at low temperature in diapause overwintering larvae, which were freeze avoidance and freeze tolerance.