ARS | Publication request: Spotted wing drosophila, Drosophila suzukii (Matsumura)(Diptera: drosophilidae), trapped with combinations of wines and vinegars

Submitted to: Florida Entomologist
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: March 4, 2012
Publication Date: June 15, 2012
Citation: Landolt, P.J., Adams, T., Davis, T.S., Rogg, H. 2012. Spotted wing drosophila, Drosophila suzukii (Matsumura)(Diptera: drosophilidae), trapped with combinations of wines and vinegars. Florida Entomologist. 95(2):326-332.

Interpretive Summary: Spotted wing drosophila is a newly introduced pest of numerous fruit crops that is spreading rapidly through the western U.S., including areas of extensive commercial fruit production. Trapping with baits is presently relied on as a means of detecting and monitoring the fly, and warning growers of the need to apply insecticides. Researchers at the USDA-ARS laboratory in Wapato, Washington, in collaboration with scientists at the Oregon Department of Agriculture, Salem, Oregon, are developing chemical attractants for spotted wing drosophila, for use in detection and management. These researchers confirmed previous findings of superior attraction of flies to combinations of wine and vinegar, demonstrated a preference for fly attraction to Merlot wine over other types of wine, and a preference for rice vinegar over other types of vinegar. In addition, they showed that there was no effect of bait age on bait attractiveness over a period of 7 days. This information provides important clues as to the nature of the chemical attractants in wine and vinegar and will aid efforts to produce synthetic chemicals lures.

Technical Abstract: Field trapping experiments evaluated wine and vinegar baits for spotted wing drosophila flies, Drosophila suzukii (Matsumura), and assessed variance in biat attractiveness with wit type, vinegar type, and bait age. A mixture of apple cider vinegar and a Merlot wine attracted more flies than a mixture of acetic acid and ethanol, and attracted numbers of flies that were similar to acetic acid with wine or ethanol with vinegar. These results incidate that chemicals in vinegar in addition to acetic acid, and chemicals in wine in addition to ethanol, are attractants for the spotted wing drosophila. Numbers of flies captured with wine/vinegar mixtures varied somewhat with wine type, with a Merlot wine yielding best captures among the wines tested. Numbers of flies captured with wine/vinegar mixes also varied somewhat with vinegar type, with a rice vinegar yielding best captures among vinegars tested. Numbers of flies captured varied little with bait age, from 0 to 7 days old. These results will assist efforts to improve the power of baits used to trap spotted wing drosophila, and provide guidance for the isolation and identification of chemical attractants from wines and vinegars.