OLIVE FRUIT FLY (BACTROCERA OLEAE) INTRODUCTION AND ESTABLISHMENT IN CALIFORNIA

The olive fruit fly (Bactrocera oleae) was first detected in California in the Los Angeles Basin in 1998. Since its initial detection, the olive fruit fly has been found in every olive-growing region of the state.
A monitoring program was initiated in 10 counties in 2002. This program has continued through 2004, and now includes 15 of California’s 58 counties.
The goals of the program are to better define olive fruit fly distribution, to identify factors contributing to success of local populations, and to gather data that would contribute to development of a phenology model for California.
Sites were selected to include a broad range of weather conditions and latitudes, including coastal, central valley and Sierra Nevada foothill locations.
In most monitoring locations, olive fruit fly trap captures have increased dramatically in the 2.5 years of monitoring.
In some cases, the increase between trapping seasons was as much as 10 times that of the previous year.
In areas such as San Diego County, where flies were detected earlier than in other regions of the state, fly densities in traps appear to be stabilizing as damage to most olives found at untreated sites reaches saturation.

V International Symposium on Olive Growing

F.G. Zalom, H.J. Burrack, R. Bingham, R. Price, L. Ferguson

Olea europaea, invasive species, exotic pest, phenology, distribution, monitoring

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.2008.791.95