Fruit Fly in December

Fruit fly numbers will soar in December if action isn’t taken to reduce the impact of fruit fly in home gardens.

Home gardeners should be on the lookout for evidence of fruit fly activity and should:

• Set up fruit fly traps and monitor them regularly (every week at least) for the presence and build-up of fruit fly.

Fruit fly survival and spread can be controlled by a few simple actions such as:

• Remove your unwanted fruit trees at no cost, simply fill out an application form at your local council customer service desk.
• Use tree, branch or fruit netting products to keep fruit fly away from your fruit as it ripens.
• Pick up or harvest and cook or destroy unwanted and un-harvested fruit.

Advice for home gardeners

Fruit fly numbers are high, now, in urban areas. Traps should be out, and netting should be purchased or repaired from last season for use just before fruit starts to ripen. An alternative to netting is for local groups of home gardeners to apply fruit fly baits to their yards every two to three weeks and stagger the date of baiting so that there are weekly baiting events across these groups.

Any crop that is ripening or ripe now is a fruit fly target within most urban and built-up township areas of the Goulburn Murray Valley.

Hot spot areas

Even though no areas have reached significant Qfly numbers – to the extent that they are in outbreak proportions – the following areas have registered concerning trap capture rates.

• Euroa
• Mooroopna
• Shepparton

It is recommended home gardeners and property owners who live near these towns have fruit fly traps out and have a fall-back position if captured numbers in traps increase (e.g. baiting, netting or tree removal.)

Weather outlook

Weather outlooks are reporting that eastern and south-eastern Australia are entering a La Nina event – as we had in mid-2019 to early 2020. This generally means more rain, cooler maximum temperatures and warmer minimum temperatures. This also means more damaged fruit, bacteria, fungi and yeasts which leads to more fruit fly.