IT might be aimed at backyard gardeners but a new book on fighting fruit fly could have benefits for the commercial horticulture industry.
Launched last month at the Queensland Garden Expo on the Sunshine Coast, The Fruit Fly Management Guide, pledges to answer every gardener and fruit grower’s long-held questions about how to protect their crops from the scourge of fruit fly.
The book was written by Australia’s very own world fruit fly authority, Professor Richard Drew.
It condenses his 50 years of research into 30 pages of practical information about controlling fruit flies and his invention, the Fruition lure and trap.
Professor Drew says his guide book, designed for commercial and home growers and organic gardeners, is essential for anyone growing fruit and vegetables either in home gardens or as commercial crops.
“The strategies in this book — including how to use the new Fruition fruit fly trap — offers growers, for the first time, comprehensive fruit fly management solutions that works in harmony with the ecosystem and are safe to humans and the environment,” Professor Drew said.
The Fruit Fly Management Guide provides simple information to help growers:
- Understand menacing fruit flies;
- Diagnose and manage the presence of fruit flies in their crop;
- Understand the basic biology of fruit flies and why they are such a serious pest; and
- Learn about all effective fruit fly control strategies, including the Fruition trap.
Professor Drew has recorded 800 species of tropical fruit flies, and described more than 500 species new to science, including the 48 species that have been identified as major pests of fruit and vegetable production.
He has freely distributed his extensive knowledge through more than 50 training workshops — equipping workers from more than 30 countries in the region to understand and manage their fruit fly problems.
Over the past decade, Professor Drew expanded his research on protein bait formulations to lure immature female fruit flies.
His formulations, which use only a minute amount of insecticide, need to be applied as merely a spot spray on some foliage of each tree (up to 10 litres per hectare) to attack and kill the immature fruit flies.
One of his more recent developments has been the formulation that allows the trap, called Fruition, to capture mature egg-laying female flies with no use of insecticides at all.
The Fruition lure and trap, combined with Professor Drew’s enhanced protein bait spray technology, now gives producers unparalleled crop protection.
Fruit fly outbreaks cost about $1 billion in control measures and market losses, weakening trade in domestic and international horticultural markets with an average annual value of $4.8 billion. It remains the biggest threat to Asia’s $3.2 billion fruit industry.
