Frutect | The senior and effective device for exterminating the Olive Fruit Fly
- Effectiveness protection against pests throughout the entire season
- Eco-friendly multiple-use device. The boards remain on the tree and only the ball container is replaced.
- “Deploy & Forget” deploy at the start of the season, without any need for further maintenance during the season.
- Combined pest control decreasing the need for spraying and hurting natural enemies
- Israeli development
At the start of the development process, the Frutect was a device using glue to capture pests, and that’s how the extermination was conducted. The basic principle was to take all the known factors and put them in one device which will be both effective and commercially ready. Up until Frutect, there was not a single device with a ball container containing luring liquids in the world. The colors were chosen carefully, as the combination of the yellow and red colors create a strong luring effect for the fruit fly. Vast amounts of money and thinking were invested in the development process, and later on a para-pheromone evaporation module was inserted to capture male flies and even create a confusion effect.
The device has a downside. It was complicated for use with the glue, mainly in areas with a lot of sand and dust – a thing that required renewing the glue often. In 2006 we decided to make a change and stop using glue and pheromones. Instead we based the pest control on a protein based luring material combined with insecticide. Additionally, the company works relentlessly on developing a new generation of Frutect and turning the yellow board into an active board that already contains from the production phase micro-capsules which release controlled amounts of insecticide (slow release). Due to the susceptibility of natural enemies we are testing different colors for the board.
The Olive Fruit Fly –
A Brief Explanation
he olive fruit fly (Bactrocera Olea) is a major pest in olive growing. The fly is a “single host” and hurts olives only. The female lays its eggs in the fruit, larvae hatch from the eggs and feed from the fruit’s pulp, thus causing the fruit to fall to the ground. This causes a decrease in crops and yield, making olives inedible and lowers the quality of olives for oil because of a rise in acidity. At the season’s start the larva will burrow in the fruit itself and during the rest of the season it will burrow in the ground, from each the adult flies will emerge.
A common treatment for the olive fruit fly is bait spraying or covering with various chemical preparations. Other methods involve using mass-trapping anti fruit fly devices, and these drastically reduce the fly’s population, while leaving the natural enemies unharmed – in comparison with spraying. Using traps forces us to implement them in advance, since the method of extermination is to gradually reduce the population rather than exterminating all at once. Furthermore, monitoring is required by using monitoring traps, checking the fruit for infection levels and maintaining awareness for a rise in population that can happen as a result of weather, fruit ripeness, neighbors treatment, more attractive fruit in the area, etc.
The Frutect trap for the olive fruit fly is suitable for all olive species – edible and oil: Souri, Nabali, Barnea, Mohassan, Maalot, Picual, Escal, Picholine Languedoc, Leccino, Koroneiki, Frantoio, Arbequina, Manzanillo, Kalamata.