Fruit fly worry for Nelson

Press, 5 August 1981, Page 1

Fruit fly worry for Nelson

Nelson reporter

No fruit from within a radius of 480 km of the area in California threatened by the Californian fruit fly was being brought into New Zealand. said Mr M. G. Baumgart. regional advisory officer in the Ministry of Agriculture in Nelson, yesterday.

He was commenting on reports that horticulturists in the Nelson district, a rapidly expanding horticultural and small berry fruit area, were expressing deep concern that their crops could be wiped out by the fly coming into the Nelson area as eggs on Californian grapes. As an additional safeguard, all fruit brought to New Zealand travelled in cool storage and the cold itself was sufficient to kill any eggs. As well, fruit consignments from overseas, and particularly citrus fruits from California, were given extremely close inspection at their ports of entry in New Zealand, he said.

The danger to New Zealand of the entry of fruit flies was by no means confined to this scare, said Mr Baumgart. There had been scares with fruit from Australia, Natal (South Africa), and citrus fruit from the Mediter-

ranean. and New Zealand in these cases imposed restrictions of a 50-mile radius from infected areas for imported fruit. By far the greater problem was the fruit brought in by people entering the country who did not declare an occasional orange, peach, or plum — fruit which appeared most susceptible to the Californian flv, said Mr Baumgart.

Eggs laid in grapes or citrus fruit brought into NewZealand would be killed in the cold conditions in which they travelled, but eggs on an orange brought into the country and not declared, could hatch in 24 hours and the damage would be done, he said. There was 10 times as much chance of fly coming into New Zealand' through airports than through other means. Mr Baumgart said.

He felt it was most unlikely that eggs would be laid on grapes.

However, with New Zealand’s climate being similar to that of California,, the fly could quite easily become established in New Zealand if allowed to.

“That is why our precautions are most stringent," he said.