Exotic Peach Fruit Fly Found in Fairfield

An exotic fruit fly was detected in a Fairfield neighborhood, agriculture officials announced Thursday. 

The fly, a Peach Fruit Fly (Bactrocera zonata), is capable of causing extensive damage to fruit and vegetable crops. The good news is that no additional flies have been found and officials set up traps quickly. 

Officials are unsure how the fly came to Solano County, according to a press release. 

The county agriculture department is asking for the public's help on three issues, according to the release:

• Cooperate with technicians placing traps in fruit trees and gardens;
• Report discoveries of fruit infested with larvae to the Agricultural Commissioner; and
• Not to circumvent international travel and mail restrictions on bringing fruit into the country.

More from Solano County:

Agriculture officials announced today that a Peach Fruit Fly Bactrocera zonata was detected in a suburban neighborhood in Fairfield.

State and county workers have responded quickly, setting up additional insect survey traps in a process called delimitation. 

“If we think of our regular exotic pest survey as a cell phone photo, then delimitation survey would be high definition with 25 times as many pixels” said Solano County Agricultural Commissioner Jim Allan. 

If additional flies are found, treatment and quarantine options will be considered. To date no additional flies have been found after several servicing’s of the delimitation traps.

The Peach Fruit Fly is native to North Africa, the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia.  It feeds on more than 30 known host fruits and vegetables, and its larvae cause damage similar to that of Medfly. How this fly came to Solano County is unknown at this time.

The local Agriculture Department requests the public’s help on three issues:

• Cooperate with technicians placing traps in fruit trees and gardens;
• Report discoveries of fruit infested with larvae to the Agricultural Commissioner; and
• Not to circumvent international travel and mail restrictions on bringing fruit into the country.

“So far, we have had wonderful cooperation from occupants. Solano County residents have a good level of awareness about the value of agriculture and food systems,” said Linda Pinfold, Deputy Agricultural Commissioner.

In recent years, several exotic pest infestations have been successfully eradicated from Solano County: European Grapevine moth in Suisun Valley, Medfly in Dixon, Japanese Dodder- an aggressive parasitic plant, and Glassy-winged Sharpshooter- an insect that carries a deadly grape disease.

“In each case, we found the pest soon enough to knock it out because our early detection system has been working” Allan said.

More information on Peach Fruit Fly may be found on the California Department of Food and Agriculture website:

http://www.cdfa.ca.gov/plant/pdep/target_pest_disease_profiles/peach_ff_profile.html