Fruitflies are among the worst enemies of fruit and vegetable farmers. These pesky insects infest a lot of fruits such as mango, guava, caimito, balimbing, pummelo, caimito, makopa and others. The vegetables that are most susceptible to this pest are patola and ampalaya.
There are a number of ways to prevent the attack of fruitflies. One of the most common is to wrap or bag the fruits while still very young. Thus we see the bagging of mango, guava, ampalaya, balimbing and others. This is effective but it can be tedious and expensive to do.
Another rather expensive method is to lure the male fruitflies with an attractant or pheromone. The old practice is to attract the insects with pheromone laced with insecticide. When the fruitflies are attracted to the pheromone, they are killed by the action of the insecticide.
Now, there is a cheaper and more environment - friendly way of eliminating the male fruitflies. Toto Barcelona of Harbest Agribusiness gave us a sample of a new trap for us to try in our fruit farm. We could say that it is terrific. We hung one in a balimbing tree and in a matter of hours, thousands of fruitflies were trapped and eventually killed without the use of insecticide.
The trap consists of a plastic bottle with a cap and a hood. Inside the bottle is a cotton holder where cotton is inserted and then moistened with methyl eugenol, the fruitfly attractant. Under the hood are several tubes through which the fruitflies enter the bottle but which won’t allow them to get out. Eventually, the trapped fruitflies just die inside the bottle.
Just a small amount of methyl eugenol is used to moisten the cotton inside the bottle with the use of a syringe. By the way, Toto Barcelona could be contacted at 0917-700-6639 for more information.
Meanwhile we have received some feedback on another fruitfly remedy we featured in this page sometime back. This is the use of tuba and brown sugar to lure fruitflies as recommended by our friend Severino Belviz of Davao City. Some readers have reported to us that the technique works very well.
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AGRI-KAPIHAN ON NOV.27. Adela Ang will talk on culinary herbs at the Agri-Kapihan which will be held on Sunday, Nov. 27, 8 to 11 a.m., at the parking lot of radio station DWWW, 23 E. Rodriguez Sr. Blvd., Quezon City.
The Agri-Kapihan is held every last Sunday of the month and is open free to every farming enthusiast. It is a project of "Kaunlaran sa Agrikultura," a radio program aired every Sunday, 774 khz, from 4:30 to 7 o’clock in the morning, hosted by Anne Bernardino, Tony Rola and Zac B. Sarian.
