Integrated Pest Management to Boost Dragon Fruit Production in Viet Nam

Methods traditionally used to suppress fruit flies in the province have been uncoordinated, with individual orchards carrying out their own pest management using chemical pesticides on a field-by-field basis. This has limited effectiveness, given the speed at which the flies reproduce – laying up to 500 eggs at a time – and their ability to  move easily to untreated crops on neighbouring farms. Integrated pest management using SIT offers the possibility of permanently reducing or eliminating fly populations across a wide area.

The integrated pest management pilot project began in January 2016, covering around 1500 hectares of dragon fruit crops. In the first three-year phase, bait sprays, sanitation and a male annihilation technique were used to reduce fruit fly infestation in the pilot area to half of the infestation levels on untreated farms.

The final stage of the programme is being implemented this year, involving the use of SIT for the first time in Viet Nam. Around one million fruit flies are being reared in special facilities every month, sterilized using irradiation, and then released into the pilot project’s pest-infested areas to further reduce the fruit fly population. If successful, this has the potential to benefit around
30 000 households and 250 dragon fruit trading enterprises in Binh Thuan in the longer term.

“We’ll release the sterile flies by driving through the dragon fruit fields by car and motorbike, throwing packets of irradiated flies out into the fields,” said Hien. “We need to drive through the farms every week following the dragon fruit crop season timeframes.”

Getting to the point of SIT implementation has not been easy, due to limited knowledge of the technique within the local offices and resistance from dragon fruit farmers, who did not at first understand how releasing more flies into the fields would ultimately reduce the population.

“They didn’t understand that the fruit fly would be sterilized,” said Hien. “They would say, ‘We have so many flies already, how can we combat this by bringing in more flies?’ So, we had to change the way we approached farmers about this with a series of trainings, leaflets and television advertisements, and it took about two years before they started thinking that maybe this could help. It’s important because getting the programme to work depends on the farmers in the entire area actively participating in the pest management.”

The IAEA and the FAO have supported the pilot project through the IAEA technical cooperation programme, focusing on integrating SIT with other suppression methods. This support has involved collecting baseline data, installing facilities to kick start the application of SIT in the country, supplying materials and equipment, and training experts in area-wide fruit fly management through scientific visits and fellowships.

As the pilot project prepares to enter its final phase, the IAEA and the FAO, through the Joint FAO/IAEA Division of Nuclear Techniques in Food and Agriculture, continue to provide technical advice and knowledge on the use of integrated pest management techniques and SIT.