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Fruit Flies Peru

Fruit Flies Peru Southern Peru’s fruit and vegetable growers are celebrating the eradication of horticultural pests, the Mediterranean fruit fly, Ceratitis capitata, and Anastrepha spp. fruit flies, after more than 20 years of hard work in their combat.

Eliminated from the Tacna and Moquegua regions by means of the area-wide integrated application of the Sterile Insect Technique (SIT), a nuclear technology package developed by a joint division of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), these pests were more than just a nuisance to fruit and vegetable growers and exporters in this Andean nation, with farmers registering annual losses of up to US$12 million, directly attributed to losses of the fruit caused by the pests.

The eradication of the Mediterranean fruit fly and Anastrepha fruit flies was part of a Peruvian government effort to improve living conditions primarily of farming communities in southern Peru, half of which remain indigent, despite sustained GDP growth averaging 5% per year, for the past five years.

Led by Animal and Plant Health Service (SENASA) of Peru, a decentralized public institution of the Ministry of Agriculture, with financing from the Interamerican Development Bank (IDB), and technical support from the FAO/IAEA Joint Division of Nuclear Techniques in Food and Agriculture, the more than 20-year National Fruit Fly programme directly benefits 17,876 fruit and vegetable producers. They cultivate melons, cucurbit vegetables and various other crops on approximately 38,000 hectares of agricultural land located in the coastal districts and inter-Andean valleys of both regions.

“The success of the project is the result of the perseverance of Peruvian authorities. It also represents a major environmental victory,” said Jorge Hendrichs, the head of Joint FAO/IAEA’s insect pest control section. “Through application of the Sterile Insect Technique, farmers in those regions will avoid using about 602,120 litres of chemical products,” he said.

But the real success may be in creating opportunities for national and in particular international trade of fruit products, expanding the country’s export portfolio. With a long mining tradition, mineral extraction is Peru’s largest foreign exchange earner, accounting for 45% of exports. “As a trailblazer in the use of this kind of nuclear technology, Peru’s effort is clearly part of a strategy to open the country’s economy,” said Hendrichs.

The National Fruit Fly Programme foresees the gradual expansion of the eradication areas to other regions where fruit fly populations are already under suppression: Ica, Arequipa, Lima, Ancash, La Libertad and Lambayeque. In neighbouring Chile, also with technical support from the FAO/IAEA Joint Division, eradication of the Mediterranean fruit fly occurred in the 1990s. As a result of its fruit fly free status, the country significantly expanded its fresh fruit and exports. Following Chile’s success, the IAEA brokered a binational Chile-Peru/ IAEA technical cooperation project to facilitate the transboundary collaboration and the harmonization of technical approaches.

A success story in the field of pest control, the Sterile Insect Technique has been utilized to eradicate from the Island of Zanzibar in the Indian Ocean, the tsetse fly (Glossina austeni), carrier of the deadly Trypanosoma protozoan, which causes sleeping sickness in humans and livestock. Sterile fruit fly mass breeding facilities have been established in various other countries, including recently in Spain, also assisting fruit growers to combat the pest and to facilitate the exports of Valencia oranges from that western European nation to the world.

Among the most non-disruptive pest control techniques available today, promoted and further developed at the FAO/IAEA Agriculture and Biotechnology Laboratory in Seibersdorf, the Sterile Insect Technique (SIT) largely consists of the release of large numbers of sterilised insects into the environment to mate with 'wild' insects of the same species. The method, based on mating habits of insects, causes pest suppression since each time a ‘wild’ female mates with a sterile male fulfilling a biological function it does not result in breeding.