2004-3-1
This is Steve Ember with the VOA Special English Agriculture
Report.
Fruit flies can damage four-hundred kinds of crops. These insects
lay eggs not just in fruit but also vegetables and nuts. The young
eat the produce, making it unusable. A female can lay a thousand
eggs in her short lifetime.
One of the most destructive kinds of fruit flies is the
Mediterranean fruit fly. California, for example, has spent almost
thirty years fighting to keep the medfly out of the state.
Even islands far out at sea are not protected. The state of
Hawaii has a history of problems with imported pests. The medfly
came to Hawaii in the early nineteen-hundreds. Since then, three
more kinds of fruit fly pests have arrived.
The Agricultural Research Service of the Department of
Agriculture has a team to deal with the problem. The United States
Pacific Basin Agricultural Research Center is located in Hilo,
Hawaii.
The center has designed a program that aims to keep damage below
an economically important level. Lost markets now cost Hawaiian
growers an estimated three-hundred-million dollars a year. Roger
Vargas is an expert on insects. He started what is called the Hawaii
Area-Wide Fruit Fly Integrated Pest Management program. The team
says this program is showing success after three years.
Past campaigns tried to kill all the fruit flies. The new program
attacks the problem through a series of steps. One is to stop fruit
fly reproduction. Infertile male flies are released to mate with the
wild population. Also, growers are told to bury all unharvested
fruit or vegetables. Or they can place them under a screening
structure to keep young flies from escaping.
The program in Hawaii also uses a biological pesticide to kill
fruit flies. It is called spinosad. It is produced by a microscopic
organism. Spinosad is put into a substance that the fruit flies like
to eat. The researchers say this is better for the environment than
the common pesticide malathion. Malathion is a chemical that is
sprayed on crops.
The program also uses a natural enemy of fruit flies. A kind of
wasp called Biosteres arisanus feeds on medflies and oriental fruit
flies.
As Kim Kaplan of the Agricultural Research Service reported last
month, growers in the program like the results so far. They say they
are using less pesticide. And they say they are finding less damaged
fruit. Officials have extended the program for two more years.
This VOA Special English Agriculture Report was written by Mario
Ritter. This is Steve Ember.