Maggots threaten Valley industry

By Don PlantWednesday, March 14, 2007 http://www.kelownadailycourier.ca/stories.php?id=20433

An alien pest known as the apple maggot is on the Okanagan‘s doorstep, and fruit growers are sounding the alarm. The tiny insect, which defiles apples and crabapples, crossed the U.S. border into the Fraser Valley last year. It‘s only a matter of time before an unwary visitor brings infested fruit into the Okanagan and introduces the maggot to commercial orchards, say growers. “We desperately need highway signage to inform the public in the Lower Mainland not to transport fruit here,” said Joe Sardinha, president of the B.C. Fruit Growers Association. “If the apple maggot were established here, it has the ability to undo all the work and achievements to date with the Sterile Insect Release program. It would force growers to go to a full spray program when they only have to do a minimal spray now.”

The Southern Interior is the only apple-growing region in North America that‘s free of apple maggots, said Hugh Philip, entomologist with the Ministry of Agriculture in Kelowna. Once the insect establishes itself here, countries that import Okanagan fruit could impose trade restrictions. Growers would see more culls and have to quarantine infected trees. Marketing local fruit would become a challenge, Philip said. Experts are worried gardeners in the Fraser Valley or Vancouver Island could dig up perennial plants with soil containing maggots or pupae and transport them to the Okanagan. “Any fruit from the Coast should be checked,” Philip said. “Don‘t bring your damn fruit here, or your infested soil. It could possibly infest . . . this whole industry.” A cousin of the cherry fruit fly, the maggot bores through the flesh of apples in late summer and leaves brown tunnels. It crawls into the ground, where it spends the winter, emerges as a fly the following summer and flies to the nearest apple tree. An electronic sign was posted on Highway 1 near Hope last year, warning motorists against bringing fruit into the Interior. A provincial campaign is now underway to erect more signs and step up surveillance of the pest. If you find one, bury it two feet underground, says Philip, or contact the ministry on Powick Road. “We‘re already wrestling with codling moth and leaf-roller. We don‘t need another major pest to deal with,” said BCFGA vice-president Fred Steele. “We want to maintain our reputation for quality.”