FREMONT – The sighting of a single female Mediterranean fruit fly mating has prompted 71 square miles of southern Alameda County to be quarantined as authorities concentrate on eradicating the invasive pest, the California Department of Food and Agriculture's Division of Plant Health and Pest Control announced Friday.
Residents and all growers, wholesalers and retailers of susceptible fruit are subject to quarantine. The goal area is bordered by Highway 84 to the north, the Alameda-Santa Clara county line to the south, the Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge to the west and Calaveras Creek to the east.
During the quarantine, the primary in Alameda County since 1981, home gardeners are encouraged to devour their very own produce on-site and never remove it from their property. Residents can devour, juice, cook, chute or otherwise process the produce on the property where it was harvested. When disposing of produce, it is suggested to double-bag the waste and put it within the regular garbage can as an alternative of the organic waste bin, officials said.
“These measures prevent the artificial spread of the infestation to neighboring regions where it could impact California’s food supply and gardens,” the CDFA said in a press release.
The Mediterranean fruit fly, or Medfly for brief, has been proven to attack over 250 sorts of fruit and vegetables and causes damage when the females lay eggs within the products, from which maggots then hatch, burrowing through the flesh of the products and rendering them “inedible for consumption”.
The CDFA, in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Alameda County Agricultural Commissioner, plans to eradicate the invasive pest by releasing sterile male fruit flies in a 39-square-mile area surrounding the infestation site at a rate of 250,000 male fruit flies per square mile per week, the news release said.
The sterile males, which come from a USDA-CDFA sterile insect breeding facility in Los Alamitos, mate with female fruit flies but don’t produce offspring, leaving no latest fruit flies to exchange the wild ones after they reach the tip of their short lives, officials said.
The organic antiparasitic agent spinosad is used to treat properties inside a 200-meter radius of the detection site. Fruit is faraway from properties inside a 100-meter radius of the detection sites of mated females, larvae and a number of other adult animals.
“The eradication approach used in this project is the standard medfly control program used by CDFA and represents the safest, most effective and efficient response program available,” the CDFA stated.
Residents who’ve questions on the project or imagine their produce could also be infested with fruit fly larvae can call the CDFA Pest Hotline at 800-491-1899. Suspected cases may also be reported by email to reportapest@cdfa.ca.gov.
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