Around 600,000 tonnes of Chilean fruit may apparently be redirected to other export terminals following the discovery of fruit fly within the city of Valparaíso where the country’s main fruit port is located.
Chile’s second-largest terminal for fruit shipments, the Port of San Antonio Este, has already begun to receive the first ships which would have set sail from the Port of Valparaíso, according to a report by Economía y Negocios.
So far 16 incidences of fruit fly have been detected at the Port of Valparaíso, according to a statement from Chile’s phytosanitary agency (SAG).
SAG said it has established a CL200m peso (US$424,900) eradication campaign which is due to last until April and already includes 1,500 traps and a team of 114 workers to deal with the situation.
“We estimate that fruit contaminated with eggs or larvae caused the situation and must have entered the country between 8 December and 12 December by some passenger who did not make the necessary declaration,” explained Ricardo Rodríguez, national manager of the Fruit Fly Programme for SAG.
Despite the incidence, Chile continues to be a country “free from fruit fly”, according to the country’s Ministry of Agriculture.
Indeed, the nation is well known for its status as a phytosanitary island due to the Pacific Ocean to the west of the nation, the Andes mountains to the east, the Atacama desert to the north and Antartica to the south.
