Project Number: 6204-43000-013-06
Project Type: Reimbursable

Start Date: Jan 01, 2003
End Date: Dec 31, 2006

Objective:
Develop viable quarantine treatments for guava, white sapote, avocado, cherimoya, passion fruit, and persimmon grown in southern California against Mexican and West Indian fruit flies. The treatments studied will be hot water immersion, heated air, irradiation, methyl bromide fumigation, and cold.

Approach:
These fruits will be obtained from California and subjected to varying intensities of the treatments listed in order to determine which treatments each fruit will tolerate. Treatments that pass fruit tolerance tests will be infested with both fruit flies, and the doses required to completely eliminate infestations of the most tolerant stages will be determined by preliminary testing at various doses. Treatment efficacy will be confirmed by treating large numbers (many thousands) of insects at target doses with no survival.