CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

The Spotted Wing Drosophila (SWD, Drosophila suzukii is a highly polyphagous fruit pest native to Asia, which in the last decade had widely expanded its range and become a serious pest in America and Europe. SWD is known to affect berries and other economically important fruits. Economic losses can range up to 90% of the total yield. In order to improve current pest management tools, the behavior of the fly under local conditions needs to be studied thoroughly. In this context, our aim was to compare, through field trials, female SWD preference/performance in 3 berry cultivars (2 raspberry and 1 blackberry) in Patagonia, Argentina where the fly has recently been detected and is problematic. The study was conducted during the austral spring and summer of 2019 in the Patagonian Andean Valleys of Argentina where fine fruits have been cultivated for more than 60 years. In order to achieve this, we deployed vinegar-baited traps in the field (18 traps in 2 farms) and also surveyed adult emergence from infected berries, thus quantifying SWD in flight and adults emerging from fruits. This was done for each cultivar through part of the flight season. With this data, we calculated preference indexes for each cultivar, taking into account the number of females captured in vinegar traps and flies (male and female) that emerged from fruit collected in the field and incubated in the laboratory in relation to the number of flies captured on average on each date/farm. Additionally, sugar concentration (BRIX) was measured from collected fruit. Our results suggest that there is no effect on female flight preference toward strawberry varieties or blackberrys. Nevertheless, fruit emergence is higher on raspberries than strawberries. Results are discussed in an applied context where environmentally-sound tools are necessary