The Fruit Fly Monitoring System in
the Caribbean
Alies van Sauers-Muller¹, Paul Graham², Lionel Wayne De Chi³
¹ Chair Fruit Fly Technical Working Group, Damboentong 282, Saramacca, Suriname
[email protected]
² Ministry of Agriculture, St George, Grenada
³ USDA-APHIS-IS, University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad
W
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Countries and territories, in the Caribbean Region face immense challenges in fulfilling this obligation for a number of reasons such as; lack
of financial and human resources, technical competence and capacity,
infrastructure, and baseline data. Further compounding the challenges
is the reality that the Caribbean Region is one of the few regions that
does not have a functioning regional plant protection organization.
The Fruit Fly Monitoring System (FFMS) was developed to enable capture of the Fruit Fly Trapping data in a centralized database. The system is an online secure web interface that allows
users in their respective countries to enter data in this central
online location. It is currently hosted on the new CPHD forum
website and can only be accessed by authorized persons. The
website is located at: http://www.cphdforum.org/fruitfly
ith the signing of the WTO/SPS Agreement, there has been liberalization in the trade of plants and plant products and an obligation on
all countries to provide sound scientific data to support the application of
any plant health measure(s) and regulatory measures to safeguard their
agriculture.
o address the standardization of data recording and an in effort to increase regional transparency—The Fruit Fly Monitoring
System (FFMS) was developed by the USDA APHIS IS Office
and the CPHD’s Fruit Fly Technical Working Group to continue
innovating and updating the scope of the Fruit Fly Trapping Programme.
In an effort to address these challenges facing agriculture in the region, the Caribbean Plant Health
Directors (CPHD) was formed to
provide the Region an opportunity
to share plant health information on
pests of mutual concern, discuss
assistance opportunities among
member countries, territories and participating organizations, and formulate a regional safeguarding approach against invasive species.
In 2008 the CPHD in collaboration with the USDA APHIS IS decided to
increase its surveillance and mitigating activities for fruit flies, with its
main objective to safeguard the Caribbean from threats and/or impact of
introduction, economic damage and spread of Tephritid fruit flies.
A comprehensive evaluation of the Fruit Fly Trapping and Surveillance
Programmes for sixteen (16) countries was conducted to determine the
status of trapping in various countries/islands. As a result of this extensive evaluation— three (3) major recommendations were tabled and
adopted for the region. These included the training and retraining for
Regions’ Fruit Fly Technicians, Geo Coding of Traps and of most focus
the Standardization of the Recording of Fruit Fly Data.
Regional training was conducted in fruit fly identification, trapping, fruit
collection, data management control methods for fruit flies, and trap geo
coding. The main fruit flies occurring in the Greater Caribbean Region
include the West Indian fruit fly, Anastrepha obliqua, and Anastrepha
suspensa; others with limited distribution of the Carambola fruit fly, Bactrocera carambolae, and most recently, some countries (Aruba and
Dominican Republic (under SIT)) now infested with medfly, Ceratitis
capitata.
Recording trapping results first made use of an excel data sheet,
however, one of the main problems was caused by the input of its
users. Users entered data using local names of host trees and
fruits, which varies from island to island rather than scientific
names.
This problem was quickly solved by moving to a web based system in which scientific names of hosts (used to place traps) are
linked to the local names of these plants in the various areas and
languages.
Other innovative aspects of the FFMS includes; providing accessibility of information to all authorized users within each respective country in one central online location, features to assist countries to create dynamic reports and data analysis, keep track of
fruit fly supplies, use google maps to chart traps, traps serving
frequency, F/T/D, follow spread in time and/or space of the existing species, early detection of new introductions.
To date sixteen (16) countries in the Greater Caribbean Region
are participating in this database; at this point in time, members
can only see the data for their own country.
The CPHD will continue to support the work of the Fruit Fly TWG
and its member states in the Greater Caribbean Region
to mitigate against and or manage the spread of economically important fruit fly species through modern and
innovative measures.
HELP US TO :
fruit.