Cashew Apple Fruit Fly

📖 Description

Bactrocera dorsalis, the Oriental Fruit Fly, is one of the most polyphagous and economically important tephritid fruit flies in the Indian subcontinent. The species was formerly considered a complex of closely related taxa (B. dorsalis, B. invadens, B. papayae, B. philippinensis) but is now treated as a single biological species — B. dorsalis sensu lato. In cashew, the female fly uses her horny ovipositor to puncture the ripening cashew apple and lay a clutch of 10–30 eggs in the flesh; the emerging maggots feed on the pulp for 7–12 days, causing it to soften and rot, and then drop to the soil to pupate. While cashew nuts (the true fruit) are not affected by the pest, the cashew apple (the swollen peduncle) is highly attractive to ovipositing B. dorsalis. The apple has emerged as a commercially important product in recent years — processed into juice, jams, candies, and the Goan liquor feni — making fly damage an increasing economic concern. India is the world’s largest cashew producer (over 700,000 tonnes of raw nuts per year) with major plantations in Kerala, Karnataka, Goa, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, and West Bengal. The cashew apple fruit fly is particularly damaging because cashew orchards typically contain multiple varieties and seedling trees with staggered fruiting, providing extended oviposition opportunity. Methyl-eugenol-based male annihilation technology (MAT) combined with protein-bait sprays and orchard sanitation forms the core of IPM packages developed by ICAR-DCR (Directorate of Cashew Research) Puttur.