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ARS Home » Northeast Area » Kearneysville, West Virginia » Appalachian Fruit Research Laboratory » Innovative Fruit Production, Improvement, and Protection » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #415324
Research Project: Integrated Production and Automation Systems for Temperate Fruit Crops

Location: Innovative Fruit Production, Improvement, and Protection

Title: Multi-year evaluation of an attract-and-kill strategy for apple maggot fly (Diptera: Tephritidae) in New England commercial apple orchards

Author
item PINERO, JAIME - University Of Massachusetts
item GODOY-HERNANDEZ, HERIBERTO - University Of Massachusetts
item Leskey, Tracy

Submitted to: Journal of Economic Entomology
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 10/12/2024
Publication Date: 10/25/2024
Citation: Pinero, J.C., Godoy-Hernandez, H., Leskey, T.C. 2024. Multi-year evaluation of an attract-and-kill strategy for apple maggot fly (Diptera: Tephritidae) in New England commercial apple orchards. Journal of Economic Entomology. 117(6):2585-2590. https://doi.org/10.1093/jee/toae253.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/jee/toae253

Interpretive Summary: Apple maggot fly is a pest of apple in eastern North America, with adult females depositing eggs in fruit leading to larval damage and/or contamination at harvest. Here, visually attractive red sticky spheres or attracticidal spheres deployed around the border of orchards were used as a management tool against this native pest and compared with conventional insecticide treatments. There was no difference in damage at harvest using these strategies over three consecutive years, but in orchards protected by red sticky or attracticidal spheres, insecticide inputs against this pest were reduced by more than two thirds, demonstrating the promise of this alternative, sustainable integrated pest management tool.

Technical Abstract: The majority of the apple fruit damage caused by the apple maggot fly, Rhagoletis pomonella, in commercial orchards in eastern North America originates from adults immigrating from unmanaged hosts. One behaviorally-based approach that was previously developed for R. pomonella control is an attract-and-kill (= AK) system involving either odor-baited red sticky spheres or odor-baited sticky-free attracticidal spheres with contoured tops that provide sustained release of both insecticide and feeding stimulant. Here, over a three-year-period in commercial apple orchards (six in 2019, 11 in 2020, nine in 2021) located in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine, we assessed the efficacy of a novel AK strategy for R. pomonella management. The ‘attract’ component of the system consisted of synthetic apple blend lures deployed on perimeter-row trees. The ‘kill’ component of the system consisted of perimeter-row insecticide sprays mixed with two percent sugar, a known fruit fly phagostimulant. The efficacy of this approach was compared against that of grower standard (GS) blocks that received full-block insecticide sprays with no sugar and no lures. As expected, monitoring red sticky spheres deployed in the perimeter of AK blocks captured significantly greater numbers of R. pomonella adults than unbaited monitoring spheres deployed in the perimeter of GS blocks. The level of penetration of R. pomonella into the interior of the blocks was consistently low and statistically similar for AK and GS blocks. Whole-block infestation levels did not differ significantly between the two management approaches. The amount of insecticide applied in AK blocks was reduced by 75%, 64.7% and 66.9% in 2019, 2020 and 2021, respectively, relative to the amount applied to GS blocks. The new grower-friendly AK approach developed could be used as part of a reduced insecticide spray-based strategy to growing apples in the region.