Sunday, 20 September 2015 10:00

Final push in fruit fly programme

Written by 
Queensland fruit fly. Queensland fruit fly.

The Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) says it hopes to complete the Queensland fruit fly eradication programme in Auckland within the next few months.

A small population of the damaging fly was found in Grey Lynn back in February and since then MPI have carried out a range of activities to get rid of it.

A controlled area was put in place with restrictions on the movement of fresh fruit and vegetables outside of this area. These movement restrictions remain in force for now.

A small number of properties with infestations of the fruit fly were treated with insecticide sprays and ground treatments. All fruiting trees within the controlled area had bait applied to attract and kill adult fruit flies.

In addition to the treatments, MPI extended its existing network of surveillance traps to locate any flies that could remain in the area. No flies have been trapped since March 2015.

MPI’s planning manager Edwin Ainley says fruit flies tend to be inactive over winter but now is the telling time.

"Now that the weather's warming up, if any flies did manage to survive the earlier treatment blitz, they'd be on the wing and we'd trap them in our extensive network of lure traps."

Ainley says in the past week the ministry has resumed more frequent checking of the surveillance traps in the A Zone of the controlled area, closer to where the original flies were found.

"Residents in this central A Zone can expect to see officials checking the traps twice weekly now."

The ministry is confident of success in the fruit fly eradication but Ainley says it needs these next couple of months of trapping to verify this.

"We can't assure our trading partners that the population is gone until the empty traps confirm our success. At this stage, we hope to declare eradication and end the movement controls on fruit and veges before Christmas."

The ministry is grateful for the support of its partners in the operation – Government Industry Agreement signatories Kiwifruit Vine Health and Pipfruit NZ, as well as the Auckland Council.

"And we are especially grateful to the people of Auckland, particularly residents and businesses in the controlled area, for their ongoing support. Without their help, this would not be possible. There will be full communication about when the activities are over."

More like this

Bikinis in cowshed

OPINION: An animal activist organisation is calling for an investigation into the use of dairy cows in sexuallly explicit content posted on social media and adult entertainment subscription site OnlyFans.

Editorial: Agri's mojo is back

OPINION: Good times are coming back for the primary industries. From sentiment expressed at Fieldays to the latest rural confidence survey results, all indicate farmer confidence at a near-record high.

MPI: Primary sector exports hit record $60B

A blockbuster year and an exciting performance: that's how Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) Director General, Ray Smith is describing the massive upsurge in the fortunes of the primary sector exports for the year ended June 2025.

Featured

Big return on a small investment

Managing director of Woolover Ltd, David Brown, has put a lot of effort into verifying what seems intuitive, that keeping newborn stock's core temperature stable pays dividends by helping them realise their full genetic potential.

Editorial: Sensible move

OPINION: The Government's decision to rule out changes to Fringe Benefit Tax (FBT) that would cost every farmer thousands of dollars annually, is sensible.

National

Machinery & Products

» Latest Print Issues Online

The Hound

Overbearing?

OPINION: Dust ups between rural media and PR types aren't unheard of but also aren't common, given part of the…

Foot-in-mouth

OPINION: The Hound hears from his canine pals in Southland that an individual's derogatory remarks on social media have left…

» Connect with Rural News

» eNewsletter

Subscribe to our weekly newsletter