|
|
|
Display category headings
Research Project:
Management of Subtropical Fruit and Vegetable Pests Using Quarantine Alternatives
Location:
Crop Quality and Fruit Insects Research
Project Number: 6204-43000-013-00
Project Type:
Appropriated
Start Date: Nov 19, 2002
End Date: Nov 18, 2007
Objective:
Develop new methods for achieving quarantine security for tropical and subtropical fruits and vegetables against insect and other pests, including postharvest treatments and pest management. Develop systems for estimating and evaluating risk of pest introductions under various quarantine systems approaches. Develop chemically based tactics to detect, eradicate or manage fruit flies and other exotic fruit production pests. Develop bait systems that use low-risk toxins, are ecologically and environmentally acceptable, and target only the noxious pest. Develop multipurpose artificial diets to mass-rear fruit fly pests, such as the guava fruit fly, South American fruit fly or apple maggot, to provide sterile insects and test populations for area-wide control programs. Determine if A. oblique populations are quiescent or aestivate in response to heat and lack of moisture.
Approach:
Collect field data concerning rates of commodity infestation in ecological communities supporting populations of quarantine pests. Field studies will determine the patterns of population structure, habitat preference, reproductive behavior, and host selection behavior so that risk of introduction can be estimated from population density data. New quarantine treatments will be developed using new technology in treatment and monitoring equipment, sampling procedures, and new information in pest physiology and ecology. Use innovative procedures of pest detection and eradication technologies to improve methods for establishing and maintaining pest free zones. Synthetic and natural substances will be identified from fruits, sex attractants, and adult feeding sources and tested for attraction in the laboratory with fertile flies, in local environments with sterile flies, and in native environments with feral flies. Chemically based tactics will be developed as the first line of defense against invasive fruit flies. Natural and synthetic chemicals will be identified from host plants, mixed in appropriate ratios in diets, and fed to larvae for their development. A desirable diet will produce more than 60% of neonate larvae developing to pupae that will produce more than 80% adult emergence. Wild larvae will be collected from fruit and allowed to pupate in their natural habitat, in dry vermiculite in their habitat, in moist vermiculite in their habitat, and in vermiculite under optimum conditions. Rate and total proportional emergence will be measured for comparison. Survival, ovariole development, and oviposition will be measured in adult flies.
|
|
Publications
| Related National Programs |
|
|
|
|
Email this page
