SAT, NOV 9 2024
5:04:02
- Author: Mark Bolda
Published on: June 20, 2009
The recent infestation of local crops by the cherry vinegar fly, Drosophila suzukii, is serious. Vinegar flies normally are associated with rotting and over-ripe fruit and have not been thought of as being anything beyond a nuisance. However, the cherry vinegar fly is different from other vinegar flies in that lays eggs into fruit which are yet to be harvested. The larvae then feed within the fruit and exit to pupate. The feeding of the larvae, while damaging in itself, also exposes the fruit to fungal and bacterial infection.
To growers, a pest such as the cherry vinegar fly presents several challenges. The first is that three of the four stages of fly development, namely the egg, larva and pupa are generally inaccessible to conventional pest management methods. Secondly, the very high numbers of flies frequently found in production fields and the apparently high breeding potential of the individual female make it very difficult to reduce a population quickly to economically acceptable levels once it is established.
While apparently new to Santa Cruz County and other areas of California, the situation of the cherry vinegar fly is not unique. Serious infestations of fruit flies (not vinegar flies) in Hawai’i, California and Florida have been successfully brought under control by multi-faceted management programs, which can guide us in our approach to managing the cherry vinegar fly.
A successful management program for cherry vinegar fly will quite likely consist of three essential parts:
1. Use of attractant bait sprays. Attractant based sprays, such as the GF 120 or NuLure, utilizing environmentally safe toxicants used in low volumes across the production field and border areas can be useful in reducing fly populations while minimizing effects on predators, parasitoids and honeybees. However, since the efficacy of any bait and toxicant decreases over time, these materials need to be re-applied, perhaps at weekly or bi-weekly intervals to be effective.
2. Field sanitation. Infested fruit which remains in the field allows eggs and larvae to fully develop and serve as a source of more flies. All infested, ripe fruit should be removed from the field and destroyed, either by burial or disposal in a closed container.
3. Looking at other successful programs of fruit or vinegar fly management, it is clear that using the above practices over a wide area was essential. It is important for every grower within a fly infested area to participate, since a single, unmanaged field will serve as a source of infestation to surrounding fields.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
1:30 - 3:30 p.m.
at the:
Robert J. Cabral Agricultural Center
2101 E. Earhart Avenue, Stockton CA
(use Google maps)
(209) 953-6100
Thanks for your help !
Yes SWD (Spotted Wing Drosophila for new readers, the name has changed, I will try and post an update today), likes moist humid conditions. In the caneberry traps, anything that is exposed and in the sun traps very few flies, while dark moist areas tend to have a lot more. According to Arturo, the Drosophila expert from Davis, moisture is really key for Drosophila, so it you don't have it, you won't have a whole lot of vinegar flies.
So you know, we don't pick up a lot, if any, SWD in strawberries that are away from infested caneberry fields, and the infestation seems to be more incidental from flies blowing in from next door. I think it must be because there is not a lot of shade nor available moisture (moist soil is under a tarp) for the flies to thrive. With this in mind, perhaps they would not be a problem in the drier environment of grapes, but we really don't know everything at this point.
By the way, that was a good meeting yesterday and kudos to the CE staff that pulled everybody in that had any information at all on SWD.