SOUTH AFRICA needs, as a matter of the greatest urgency, to create its own fruit fly-free areas, hence the decision to launch a pilot project designed to eradicate the pest by way of sterilisation.
The Hex River Valley project, employing what is known as the sterile insect technique, is being co-funded by the Agricultural Research Institute's fruit, vine and wine research institute (ARC Infruitec-Nietvoorbij) and the International Atomic Agency in Vienna.
Two species of fruit fly occur in the Western Cape, the Mediterranean and Natal fruit fly, both of which are quarantine pests in the international fruit market.
Len Beans of the Atomic Energy Agency has warned that unless South Africa manages to control the problem it could affect exports to some markets in future.
And Dr Brian Barnes of the Agricultural Research Institute says it will be a disaster for the Western Cape, employing 300 000 people in the deciduous fruit industry, if overseas markets are lost as a result.
The technique involves breeding and releasing mllions of sterile male fruit flies every week over the target area to mate with fertile female flies in the wild population.
The wild female's eggs are never fertilised, thus do not hatch, and so the wild population eventually dies out. The possibility of selling sterile fies to other countries is also being investigated.
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