Tasmania’s vastly different landscapes makes managing the fruit fly risk and eradication efforts even more difficult.
Dr Penny Measham from Hort Innovation spoke at the Fruit Growers Tasmania conference about how the differences between rural, urban and commercial landscapes affected fruit fly management on mainland Australia.
“The landscape type is really critical in understanding fruit fly behaviour,” Dr Measham said.
Biosecurity Tasmania chief executive Lloyd Klump confirmed Tasmania had the same issues.
Dr Measham explained that urban areas can create micro-climates, where hosts are available all year round, so fruit flies can survive over winter.
The modelling that Hort Innovation has done shows that unmanaged landscape is more of a threat than managed landscapes.
“When 90 per cent of the landscape is managed, that is all the growers are doing the right thing, then the pest suppression is really quite good,” Dr Measham said.
“In urban areas, if you’re only undertaking management in a commercial area, even with 90 per cent of that commercial landscape being managed, pest suppression is not as high. That’s the impact of the urban environment,” she said.
The urban effect meant it was vital that the community as well as the fruit industry was working to eradicate fruit fly, she said.
“Managing fruit fly is an effort from all stakeholders.”
The areas where Tasmania has experienced fruit fly incursions this year – Flinders Island, Acacia Hills and Sassafras and George Town – has all needed different management strategies as a result, Dr Lloyd said.
“They are three very different areas with very different approaches and some really good planning and some really good understanding of the fly, and how they operate in those environments, dictates how we respond to them,” he said.
“In a fruit growing area you have an orchard which has chemical control regimes, and those actions in themselves contribute to eradication of the fly in those areas.”
An urban area has different people in individual properties that requires different approaches to commercially managed operations.
“We still need people to be vigilant,” Dr Lloyd said.
Johanna Baker-Dowdell
Johanna has more than 22 years experience as a journalist for newspapers, magazines and online publications.
Johanna has more than 22 years experience as a journalist for newspapers, magazines and online publications.
