Review of vehicle inspection historical data as a tool to monitor the entry of hosts of Queensland fruit fly Bactrocera tryoni (Froggatt) (Diptera : Tephritidae) into a fruit fly free area

Abstract

Historical records from Victorian fruit fly roadblocks were analysed to identify past trends. A model using month of year and time of day accounted for most of the variance in travellers carrying fruit at the Euston, Barham, Kyalite and Wentworth sites in 1980–81. Different sites had different characteristics and pooling of results across sites is likely to be invalid. Tomatoes were found to make up 49.3% of infested fruit during the 7-year period between 1976–77 and 1982–83. Travellers originating from Sydney carried 69.3% of the infested fruit. The proportion of the 3 origins carrying infested fruit did not vary significantly during the 7-year period. The interceptions were not evenly distributed with 50% of the detections occurring in 2 of the 7 years.