The Insidious Olive Fruit Fly
On another continent, olive farmers in Albania are seeing increased returns on their olive crop, thanks to an IPM effort to thwart the olive fruit fly.

This tiny pest’s larvae were damaging olives grown for olive oil production. They also made the olives bitter, reducing farmers’ income.

Under the old communist economy, collective farms produced olives for oil and table use, controlling the three major insect pests that attack the crop—the olive fruit fly, the olive moth, and black scale—using pesticides. When the government privatized the olive groves about 15 years ago, farmers were no longer able to afford insecticides, so the olive fruit fly thrived. Those who tried sprays were thwarted if the farmer owning the next block of trees in the orchard didn’t spray too. The quality of their olives—and their income—dropped.

The solution was simple—and free. Albanian researchers collaborating with Doug Pfeiffer, professor of entomology in Virginia Tech’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, discovered the most damage was done in the last couple of weeks before harvest. During the same time period, oil content didn’t really increase very much. By the simple expedient of harvesting their crop two weeks earlier, farmers found that fruit fly damage decreased and their olives produced the higher priced “extra virgin olive oil.” Read more about IPM’s Albanian research in Virginia Tech’s Research magazine.

Overseeing the IPM CRSP is rewarding for S. K. De Datta, associate provost for international affairs at Virginia Tech and also director of OIRED, the managing entity for the program. “Research results from the program benefit the countries involved through increased sustainable agriculture and natural resource management research and education,” he says. “And, they benefit the United States and Virginia through domestic applications of research, reduced pesticide residues on imported fruits and vegetables, reduced threats from invasive species, and expanded demand for our export products as incomes grow in developing countries.”

Virginia Tech has been researching and implementing Integrated Pest Management (IPM) for more than a quarter century. During the previous IPM phases of funding, Virginia Tech’s program increased farmers’ profits from California to the Philippines, and assisted in reducing pollution. For example: IPM research has identified key pests in Uganda (coffee wilt pathogen), the Philippines (onion root knot nematode), Mali and Bangladesh (tomato leaf curl geminiviruses), the Caribbean (pepper gall midge), and Central America (snow pea leafminer). At one site in the Philippines, benefits were estimated at $150,000 a year for 4,600 local residents of six villages. Read about more impacts here.

Muni Muniappan, director of the IPM CRSP, finds leading the program highly rewarding. “The exciting thing about managing this project is knowing that it is having a direct impact on the nutrition, health, and economic well-being of so many people around the world.”

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