Fruit-Flies

Fruit Flies- It’s a BIG Issue!

By: Liezl

Nowadays, fruit flies are a huge issue. They are spoiling our fruit that is being sold globally. If this continues, our whole economy will go down! They spoil fruit by laying eggs inside ripening fruits and feed on the flesh of the fruit that they infest so that it isn’t at a good quality to be exported.

To try stop fruit flies from infesting our fruit, we have to keep home grown fruit at home and not to move fresh fruits out of our property. Sometimes fruits and vegetables need to be brought out of home. This is when we have to make sure that the fruits and vegetables that we are bringing are store bought not grown at our houses.

The food that fruit flies usually attack are tomato, capsicum, pumpkin, courgette, marrow, avocado, eggplant, olives, berries, nuts, compost and peelings. These are also the food that we have to be careful with.

If the population of Fruit Flies grow even bigger than present, the task of getting rid of them will not be easy.

When maggots are found in a ripe fruit, make sure the fruit is placed in a plastic container with several pieces of scrunched up paper. Put the lid on and put them in the fridge. The other place you can place it, is in a bin, provided by MPI which is The Ministry of Primary Industries.

The solution to this problem may be listening to MPI’s instructions especially about bringing fruit or vegetables out of the Fruit Fly zone.