Completed project
Trapping efficacy in table grape vineyards for area wide management of Queensland fruit fly (TG19001)
Publication date: May 7, 2020
Delivery Partner: The Victorian Department of Jobs, Precincts and Regions
© 2026 Horticulture Innovation Australia Limited.
From 2020 to 2022, this investment further developed mass trapping methods as a tool to assist in the control of Queensland fruit fly and evaluated the effectiveness of trapping at decreasing fly populations for table grape growers.
Working across the 2020/21 and 2021/22 seasons, this project looked at how mass trapping might be used to assist control. The research involved four case studies in commercial vineyards and experimental work; three focused on whether protein baited traps and/or a new Agriculture Victoria Research AVR sticky trap might be used (building on recent research in pome and stone fruit orchards) and one explored trap placement within and around vineyards.
The trap-related research led to several important findings:
Vineyards differ markedly from fruit orchards in the shelter they provide for adult fruit flies, and the increased catches of flies around the perimeter may be due to flies moving in and out of the crop on a daily basis.
The fourth case study using RapidAIM traps (which collect real-time data on male fly catches) provided more evidence that perimeter traps outperform interior traps. A laboratory study explored whether these traps could be modified to target female flies. It found that the use of protein bait within the traps would catch low numbers of females and the addition of a red visual cue increased trap captures in the laboratory, though field trapping was still low.
A grower survey provided several important grower perception insights, including stigma related to an infestation and the cost of mass trapping, and an experiment demonstrated that some grape varieties are more attractive to female flies than others, with field trials needed to validate this.
The project provided new knowledge to help inform table grape growers on the potential for mass trapping of Queensland fruit fly in their vineyards, such as:
Read these two articles about the project and its results, published in Vine Magazine:
Visit the Australian Table Grape Association website for industry information and resources.
This project was a strategic levy investment in the Hort Innovation Table Grape Fund
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