Two specimens of the destructive ag pest, the peach fruit fly, were found in Florida; discover what you need to know about identifying it.

 

The peach fruit fly is a destructive ag pest that, despite its name, affects many different crops growing in Florida. Two flies were caught in May in Florida, prompting a state-wide alert. Explore the characteristics of this destructive ag pest, as shared in a Growing Produce article, below.

Identifying the Peach Fruit Fly

 

The Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services’ Division of Plant Industry (FDACS-DPI) issued a pest alert after one peach fruit fly was caught in a trap in Lake Worth in mid-May and another was caught one day later about two miles away from the first. Bother were males. The last time the fly was found in Florida was in 2010.

The article maintained the peach fruit fly affects over 54 different plants, including: “ommon guava, avocado, mango, peach, sugar apple, apple (Malus domestica), bitter gourd, date palm, okra, papaya, apple (Malus pumila), pomegranate, quince, sweet orange (Citrus sinensis), and tropical almond (Terminalia cattapa),” according to the article.

Gary Steck, with the FDACS Bureau of Entomology, Nematology, and Plant Pathology, offered the following identification characteristics for the peach fruit fly:

“The wing color pattern of the peach fruit fly comprises only a small dark spot near the wing tip that is reduced from the pattern seen in the otherwise similar Oriental fruit fly (B. dorsalis), which has a complete costal band and anal streak that overlays the basal cubital wing cell. The Asian guava fruit fly, B. correcta, has a nearly identical wing pattern, but the colors of the thorax are notably darker, not the red-brown seen in B. zonata.”

See the full article here.

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