Meeting participants

The Food and Agriculture Organization for the United Nations (FAO), in coordination with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Eduardo Mondlane University held this week at Maputo the first national coordinators meeting of the regional initiative in fruit fly management in Africa, within the RAF5074 project.

About 20 representatives from African countries participated under the motto "Enhancing Capacity For Detection, Surveillance and Suppression of Exotic and Established Fruit Fly Species Through Integration of Sterile Insect Technique with other Suppression Methods".

For the FAO Representative in Mozambique, Castro Camarada, "the introduction and impact of Tephritid flies present a major challenge to horticultural development for Africa affecting trade and reducing the potential for economic growth".

In Mozambique, some of the earliest interventions for managing fruit flies were initiated by FAO under a TCP project which included specialized technical expertise support from the International Centre for Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE).

Castro Camarada mentioned also that "the presence of fruit fly in Mozambique not only affects the commercial sector, but also small scale farmers and informal traders that use fruit and vegetable production as a source of income".

According to the professor of Agronomy and Forestry Engineering College from UEM, Domingos Cugala, "actually the fruit fly has spread to the rest of the country but, some control measures and investigations are being implemented. We have already made several studies to allow the release of export various products to South Africa mainly without unconstrained problems", he said.

In terms of adopted measures to face this phenomenon, Cugala reported that "we are advising the producers to sanitize the orchard, to apply proteins already formulated to combat the fly and we are implementing biological control by introducing natural enemies of fruit flies in the northern, central and south but, this measure comes a little expensive for farmers so it´s being implemented only by the government from Chimoio Laboratory".

Due to occurrence of pests and diseases on fruit, the possibilities to export have been seriously affected by the rigorous restrictions measures imposed by the importing countries.

In the occasion, the Scientific Director from UEM, Bettencourt Capece said that "the current project constitutes an opportunity for African region and Mozambique in particular to use sustainable fruit fly control methods including the use of Sterile Insect Technique based on radiations which would not be possible its use as a single country and without the assistance of IAEA specialists".

In Mozambique, the invasive fly was first detected in 2007 in Cuamba district in the Northern province of Niassa but it has spread to the rest of the country. To deal with this plague, a fruit fly new laboratory was established in Chimoio especially for research activities in the country.