Few pests have a greater impact on world trade in agricultural products than tephritid fruit flies. They cause major losses in fruit and vegetables, and are often the target of intensive insecticide applications to protect commercial production. Their economic consequences are so great that countries free of the major tephritids prohibit the import of fresh produce from countries where these pests are endemic, and have active detection and emergency response programmes in place to maintain their fruit fly free status.
The Sterile Insect Technique (SIT) is often used as part of area-wide integrated pest management (AW-IPM) programmes that aim to establish areas with a low pest prevalence (ALPP) or even pest-free areas (PFA) Increasingly, SIT is also being applied as part of an integrated approach for area-wide suppression to achieve ALPP status. Horticultural products cultivated in PFA do not require quarantine measures for international trade. Products produced in ALPP can be commercialized in international markets, however, only when they are part of a set of pest mitigation measures known as a systems approach where the ALPP is one of the prerequisites. Postharvest treatments can be a pest mitigation measure in a systems approach.
Panama has embarked on an IAEA technical cooperation project[1] to expand and strengthen a phytosanitary surveillance system for non-native fruit flies of economic and quarantine importance. The goal is to facilitate the establishment and maintenance of PFA and ALPP, and to determine potential technological alternatives for post-harvest quarantine treatments for agricultural products to facilitate the trade of fruit and vegetables.
