Spotted Wing Drosophila First Responder Network Widening in Mid-Atlantic States

Yesterday on Today’s Topic, we heard from NC State Associate Professor of Entomology Dr. Hannah Burrack on the Spotted Wing Drosophila which has been found in soft-skinned fruit in the Carolinas and Virginia. Burrack says that the detection of this insect in the Mid-Atlantic States was due in no small part to a group of lay-people that have been termed ‘first responders’:

“We’ve been running a program that we call the Spotted Wing Drosophila volunteer monitoring network for two years now. Initially, we focused on what we would consider first responders for invasive species so we worked with county cooperative extensive agents, NCDA, and regional agronomists and we trained them primarily by webinar, to spot Spotted Wing Drosophila and then collected data from them and that network was responsible for the first detections of Spotted Wing Drosophila in North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia.”

And it’s because of this network of detection that growers have been able to be on the lookout for this pest:

“We’ve successfully tracked movement of this insect into our states and provided our growers and our homeowners that would be growing these plants in their back yards with the information to understand where the insect is and provided them with an early warning that it was moving into their area.”

Burrack explains that having the first responders network in place for a couple of years now, it’s time to branch out to other lay-people across the region:

“Now, what we’re focusing on doing is expanding out to folks beyond our first responders, so we’re working more with growers who are interested in monitoring Spotted Wing Drosophila on their farms as well as possibly the general public who might be interested in monitoring Spotted Wing Drosophila. So, we’re developing a series of webinar training sessions that instead of targeting extension agents, are going to target the general public, and we’re going to make our monitoring tools available to them to track the movement of this insect.”

Burrack says that the tracking of the Spotted Wing Drosophila is important:

“This insect has the potential to be highly economically significant and more importantly have real impacts on the production systems that we’ve tried to make more sustainable over the past few years, so we’re concerned about those effects. But, our main concern is that people are aware of it. Because, it’s a potentially manageable issue right now, unless you are caught completely unawares.”

To learn more about Spotted Wing Drosophila monitoring contact Dr. Burrack at hannah_burrack@ncsu.edu, or visit her blog at http://ncsmallfruitsipm.blogspot.com

Spotted Wing Drosophila Present in the Carolinas

The Spotted Wing Drosophila has made an appearance in the southern Atlantic states. Hannah Burrack, Assistant Professor of Entomology, NCSU explains the concern associated with this pest:

“Our primary concern with Spotted Wing Drosophila is the fact that they preferentially feed on ripe and ripening soft-skinned fruit.”

Such as raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, peaches, plums and the like.

Burrack says the timing of feeding cycle of the Spotted Wing Drosophila is particularly worrisome:

“In addition because they’re feeding at a time of the growing cycle that we’d be interested in harvesting those crops and selling them, there’s a limited number of resources that growers can use to manage these pests. Because you can’t use many of our chemical management tools at or around harvest time, that’s some thing that the label doesn’t allow you to do.”

As to control measures, at this moment, Burrack says there’s not a lot of choices:

“So, what we’ve been looking at, and unfortunately our main control measure is chemical right now, using the few pesticides that we can use around the harvest period, that don’t result in pesticide residue on the fruit, using those materials as judiciously as we can, in addition to really good sanitation. These insects complete their life cycle on that ripe and ripening fruit, so it’s very important to harvest cleanly, remove all the fruit possible out of the field so there’s not a reservoir out there, and not leave that fruit in the field. so, if you harvest it, you have to remove it and discard it somewhere and kill those immature insects before they mature into adults.”

And in addition, there are the use of pesticides. But Burrack warns that is a short-term solution:

“On top of that, in most cases, using chemical pesticides, and there are conventional chemical pesticides, as well as organic chemical pesticides that have been used to manage Spotted Winged Drosophila. That’s not a long term solution by any stretch of the imagination. So, what that’s resulted in is a lot more pesticides being used in these systems than has occurred in the past, and that’s not sustainable.”

We’ll talk more with NCSU’s Hannah Burrack tomorrow on Today’s Topic about the Spotted Winged Drosophila.

Photo:  Penn State - Pennsylvania Integrated Pest Management

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