Sapota Fruit Borer

📖 Description

Meridarchis scyrodes, the Sapota Fruit Borer, is a specialist carposinid moth that has emerged as a key pest of commercial sapota (chikoo) orchards in India. The Carposinidae are a small family of micro-lepidopterans whose larvae are fruit-borers — the most famous member of the family is the codling moth (Cydia pomonella) of temperate pome fruits, and Meridarchis scyrodes plays an analogous role in tropical sapota production. The pest is endemic to the Indian subcontinent and South-East Asia and is now established across all of India’s major sapota-growing tracts — Gujarat (Valsad, Navsari), Maharashtra (Dahanu, Palghar, Nashik), Karnataka (Kolar, Chikkaballapur), and Tamil Nadu (Kanyakumari, Tirunelveli). The female moth lays eggs singly on the fruit surface, usually near the calyx end; the emerging larva bores directly into the fruit and feeds internally on the pulp for 12–18 days, after which it exits to pupate in the soil or in dried fruit calyces. The damage is largely internal and not visible externally until the bore-hole frass is observed — by which point the fruit is already unsaleable. Sapota is unusual among tropical fruits in that it bears flowers and fruits continuously throughout the year in irrigated orchards, allowing the pest to maintain overlapping generations year-round. This biological feature makes the pest particularly difficult to suppress — there is no off-season when the population can be broken. IPM packages developed by IIHR Bangalore and CPCRI Kasaragod emphasise daily collection of fallen fruits, Btk applications at 15-day intervals, and fruit-bagging in high-value orchards as the core management tactics.