2023-06-12 08:46:00
The Funbapa (Patagonian Zoophytosanitary Barrier Foundation) teams have been carrying out an intensive task in Cinco Saltos since on March 22, the date on which Senasa declared a health emergency due to an outbreak of fruit flies and arranged a seven-kilometer-round fence in the urban area.
The pears and apples were stored in chambers other than those with fly-free status.which are those that were harvested before March 22.
These days you can see the squads with their trucks visiting the gardens of the houses. They roam block by block of Cinco Saltos to spray and lift fruit from pest hosts. These are orange, mandarin, and lemon trees, places where the fly usually stays to shelter from the cold.
The fruit fly is a pest of tropical origin and is normally killed by winter. It adapts to hot and humid environments, as can happen here in summer.
Alejandro Mussi, head of emergency for the Alto Valle Oeste of Funbapa.
They also tend to choose the exit area of the heater pipes, where a microclimate is generated. Unlike humans, who regulate body temperature, insects live or die depending on the weather.
The traps multiplied by ten in the place of the outbreak, explained Alejandro Mussi, head of emergency at Funbapa in Upper Valley West. There are 280 and they will fall by half at the end of the month, when the network of 2,200 traps is set up, guaranteeing that Patagonia is a fly-free area.
“We leave a small net in case something falls. We wait in case an alert arises. The traps are read every seven days, every Monday the monitor passes by”Mussa stressed when describing the tasks.
All the traps are analyzed in the Funbapa laboratories in Allen and Viedma.
They look for pulps or larvae of the fruit fly under the trees
Regarding the tasks, the samplings were also intensified, the fruit was lowered and chemical and cultural treatments are carried out to guarantee that there are no residues, flies, pupae or larvae under the trees.
It might not be established how the outbreak arose, but Mussi said that the impact is “insignificant” because when the emergency was declared “98% of the fruit was already harvested. Only the Pink Lady and some Granny remained.
The director of Health of Senasa, Esteban Rial, explained to Diario RÍO NEGRO that from Funbapa they are paying attention to the outbreak to prevent it from spreading to other locations. “Senasa supervises all its tasks and also supervises all the movements of fruit from farms and packing sheds to prevent it from being moved to other places without proper control and supervision.”
- 280
- those that were installed in Cinco Saltos due to the health emergency, ten times more than the usual ones.
Rial said that with the arrival of the cold “the plague has not been present for a while” and what follows is the cleaning of patios by Funbapa. “Then, in spring they will have to reinstall a trapping net to complete another quarantine cycle and in November the area would be declared free of fruit flies,” he estimated.
A year ago a similar outbreak occurred in Cipolletti and the emergency plan lasted almost 10 months.
The fruit fly pest is one of the most economically important for fruit and vegetable growing from Argentina, due to the damage it causes to the fruit.
Since 2005, Patagonia has been internationally recognized as a fruit fly-free area.which facilitates access to new markets, saves quarantine treatment costs and enables crop diversification.
They ask the neighbors for collaboration to work in the gardens
The Funbapa work team They have divided the areas within the focus in Cinco Saltos and they are going through them to detect fly hosts of the fruits in patios and gardens.
They highlight how necessary the collaboration of the neighbors is to help end the outbreak, by allowing them to enter.
On their tours of the city they try to convince them to put down the fruit. A difficult task on many occasions. Mussa describes it like this: “It’s that they were waiting to be able to eat that orange that they had so much trouble producing… And when it’s just ready, they lose it. But the important thing is that we all look to the long term to eradicate the plague.”
The same thing happens to them when they visit the producers who were left within the emergency area. “They complain and tell us: ‘it just happened to me’, as if it were a personal matter. They’ve been producing fruit all year and now they can’t get it out the way they want.
Once the fruit is taken down from orange, lemon, mandarin, etc., it is treated and sent to Allen’s laboratory. There they cut them to see if they have larvae or pupae.
The fruit fly program run by Funbapa is financed with funds from producers through a mandatory contribution canon. If fixed per ton of exported host fruit that leaves the region or goes to the industry. The public sector provides the legal framework at the national and provincial levels to strengthen the program. It provides personnel, infrastructure, supplies and the sterile fly from Senasa.
The pest control program areas in Patagonia
The most important is the Alto Valle, since it covers 930,560 hectares. They are followed by 25 de Mayo-Catriel with 45,590 hectares, Valle Medio with 33,081; El Bolsón, Puelo, Esquel 26,195 has., Valle Inferior 14,037, followed by other smaller ones.
Measures to neutralize the fruit fly
– Intensified surveillance (through trapping devices and fruit sampling).
– Collection and destruction of the host fruits of the pest.
– Removal of soil under the treetops.
– Immobilization of the fruit of the regulated areacarrying out phytosanitary treatments and application of protection measures.
– Traceability for the mobilization of host fruits.
– The export of fruits from the regulated area to markets with restrictions without quarantine treatment was prohibited.
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