MEDITERRANEAN FRUIT FLY.

Taranaki Daily News, 4 August 1933, Page 3

MEDITERRANEAN FRUIT FLY.

’(To the Editor.) Sir, —Having received to-day a copy of your paper of July 26, I was asked as Dominion president to contradict a misleading statement which appeared in that issue in reference to the possible introduction of Mediterranean fruit fly into New Zealand. I was much interested in the figures obtained from the Minister of Agriculture by Mr. S. G. Smith, M.P., as to the regular quantity of Mediterranean fruit fly larva which was entering this country through infested oranges previous to the embargo being placed on Australian fruit and vegetables. Tfley’ are certainly very convincing. On the contrary the importers’ statement, which you also published, is just as misleading when it is said there is no record of the Mediterranean fruit fly ever having established itself in New Zealand. Records go to show that it has been established on at least two occasions, once at Dargaville and another at Takapuna. These were costly experiences, orchards were cut down and burned and growers compensated. Why should the fruit fly not thrive in New Zealand? It does enormous damage in tire Armidale district of New South Wales, which is on steppes 5000 feet high with climatic conditions more severe ' than in New Zealand. Again, one of our local growers who has just returned from a visit to Australia visited Hawkesbury Agricultural College near Sydney, where the fruit fly is most prolific. Infested fruit was buried 12 inches deep, then there was an infestation of from 5 per cent, to 16 per cent, from them. Winters there are just as severe as in the South Island of New Zealand, a frost of lOdeg. to 12deg. being quite commonj and on actions as high

as 16deg. In any case the average temperatures of Sydney and .Auckland are exactly the same, and Alexandra of Central Otago has a higher summer temperature than either Auckland or Sydney. Mr. Fuller, entomologist to the Natal Government, reared the Mediterranean fruit fly in fourteen days and in a freezing chamber. There is no doubt about the extraordinary vitality of the fly.—l am, etc., CHAS. E. POPE, President of the Dominion Council of Tomato, Soft Fruit and Produce Growers. C.hristefcur.(& Aueust 2.