Chile’s Department of Agriculture and Livestock (SAG) has confirmed an outbreak of fruit flies in an urban area in the far northern city of Arica in Region XV, according to a report in The Santiago Times.
Two female flies were first discovered in the city’s O’Higgins district on 21 July, with authorities detecting several more flies with larvae the following day.
SAG has announced emergency measures to control the outbreak and is asking residents to cooperate by allowing officials to spray pesticides in their houses.
So far, the flies do not appear to have affected the region’s agricultural sector, which is primarily focused on tomato production.
SAG plans to conduct DNA studies on the fruit flies to determine whether they came from Peru, to the north, or Argentina, to the east.
Fruit flies are taken extremely seriously in Chile, which boasts a large and lucrative US$2.2bn fresh fruit industry.
