Fruit production in Anguilla may not be as prolific as in other neigbouring islands, but efforts are being made here to guard against the fruit fly, one of the pests now roaming the island.
A workshop to that end was held in Anguilla, last week at which a number of regional participants, as well as representatives from Anguilla, were in attendance at La Vue Conference Centre.
The workshop was part of an initiative by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) through collaboration with other international agencies, including the Food and Agriculture Organisation, operating in the Caribbean region. The aim is to bring all Caribbean countries together through a Plant Health Forum to highlight the need for plant protection. This is being achieved through capacity building exercises mainly in the smaller islands of the Northern Caribbean.
Mr.Lionell Wayne De Chi, an Agricultural Scientist working with USDA and based in Trinidad, spoke to reporters in Anguilla during the workshop. He said that USDA had done an evaluation of the fruit fly in the region and had found, through visits to all islands in the Caribbean, that protection measures against the pest were badly disorganised. As a result USDA undertook to fund the implementation of recommendations arising out of that evaluation aimed at controlling the fruit fly. “This exercise is to deal with the smaller islands of the Northern Caribbean,” he said. “These are the British Virgin islands, St.Maarten/St. Martin, Anguilla, St. Kitts and Nevis and Antigua – and we selected Anguilla to be the training ground for this particular exercise. We are highlighting the smaller islands because we want to highlight plant protection services for these islands to show the deficiencies and how they can be upgraded.”
The main facilitator for the workshop was Alies van Sauees-Muller, Coordinator of Fruit Fly Research with the Ministry of Agriculture in Suriname. She explained that every fruit affected by fruit fly larvae would eventually fall to the ground allowing the larvae to crawl out, make their way into the soil and after 10-14 days a new fly would emerge and infest other fruit with eggs. “Whatever fruit is on the ground with larvae, you have to destroy it,” she advised. “You can put it in a plastic black bag, tie it up and put it out in the sun. Every worm that escapes and crawls into ground is a new fruit fly.”
Reporters were told by local personnel that there was a considerable amount of fruit fly infestation in Anguilla and that the Department of Agriculture had been alerting farmers and addressing the problem regularly using various methods of control.
