Adaptive area-wide management of Queensland fruit fly using the sterile insect technique: Guidelines for efficient and effective pest suppression and stakeholder adoption (ST15014 and ST15015)

This project was a collaborative initiative of the Rural R&D for Profit program, delivered through Hort Innovation’s Hort Frontiers Fruit Fly Fund. It investigated, trialled and finalised guidelines and resources for the area-wide management of Queensland fruit fly, which have been brought together at www.area-wide-management.com.au.

What is the Rural R&D for Profit program?

The Australian Government’s Rural R&D for Profit program is a competitive grants initiative that boosts funding to the country’s 15 rural research and development corporations. It supports nationally coordinated research for the benefit of Australian primary producers, outside of the levy system. Since the program begun in 2015, Hort Innovation has led or otherwise supported a number of collaborative Rural R&D for Profit projects, including this one. You can learn more about the program on the Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment’s website here.

What was this project all about?

Adaptive area-wide management of Queensland fruit fly using the sterile insect technique (SIT): Guidelines for efficient and effective pest suppression and stakeholder adoption ran from 2015 to 2018 to support the control of Queensland fruit fly, particularly in the context of the broader SIT program, which is about releasing factory-reared sterile male fruit flies into the wild to effectively stop the wild pest population from breeding (more on that here).

Area-wide management (AWM) is a proven management approach for mobile pests around the world. It’s about employing a united strategy to target all pest habitats within a well-defined area or region to reduce the total pest population. It’s often required prior to the implementation of SIT, to help an area reach appropriate pest numbers for the sterile insect release to be effective.

For this project, Hort Innovation teamed up with CSIRO and the Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment to produce an online tool with clear guidelines and resources to help anyone undertake an AWM program for Queensland fruit fly: www.area-wide-management.com.au.

The guidelines help people understand AWM, how to get started implementing it for fruit fly, and the opportunities to implement SIT once AWM has been successfully implemented.

To work properly, AWM requires input from the whole community. Because of this, the website offers three different sets of steps in implementing AWM, depending on whether the user is an AWM coordinator, a commercial grower or a backyard gardener.

Each section has clear steps and accompanying video content. There is also a range of useful materials and information, including all the science and research that formed the foundation of the guidelines, plus downloadable posters and fact sheets.

The project also looked at the next steps needed to progress the implementation of SIT to feed into related fruit fly initiatives.

Full details can be found in the final research report, available from the top of this page.

Who was involved in the work?

In addition to Hort Innovation, CSIRO and the Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment, the work involved collaboration with Agriculture Victoria, Bio-Fly, the NSW Department of Primary Industries, Primary Industries and Regions South Australia (PIRSA), the South Australian Research and Development Institute (SARDI), Queensland University of Technology and Wine Australia.

ACT NOW

Visit the adaptive area-wide management of Queensland fruit fly website to access the guidelines and resources: www.area-wide-management.com.au.

You can also watch the below short video providing an overview of the resource:

The below resources are available on the area-wide management website, and can also be downloaded directly here:

• Posters
  • What is AWM?
  • What is Queensland fruit fly? (identification poster)
  • Apple and pear
  • Blueberry
  • Cherry
  • Citrus
  • Grape
  • Stone fruit
  • Strawberry
    
    
• Fact sheets
  • Area wide management and SIT overview
  • Why manage Queensland fruit fly?
  • Management challenges
  • Fruit fly lifecycle and identification
  • Monitoring overview
  • Hygiene
  • Bait sprays
  • The ‘male annihilation technique’
  • Urban and backyard treatments
  • Orchard management brochure (2015)