No flies on them thanks to Queensland innovation
Children in parts of Vietnam are eating fresh fruit for the first time in their lives and an export industry has been created because of a groundbreaking fruit fly control method developed in Queensland.
Australia gave the world Vegemite but now a Queensland researcher has given the world something far more valuable – a fruit fly bait made from the same base ingredient as our famous spread.
Professor Dick Drew (pictured, in dark cap), director of the International Centre for Management of Pest Fruit Flies at Griffith University, has led a team in Brisbane and Vietnam to develop a clean, green, inexpensive protein bait made from the waste of yeast used in the beer making process.
“In Australia we turn that yeast waste into Vegemite but in Vietnam we’ve built a factory on the site of the Foster’s Brewery in southern Vietnam to convert the yeast waste into fruit fly bait,” Professor Drew said.
The ecologically friendly bait has been an outstanding success in Vietnam with large scale field trials seeing fruit fly damage reduced from 100 per cent to five per cent.
“For the first time in their lives, hill tribe children are eating fresh fruit and for the first time in generations, fruit trees are producing crops which locals can sell.
“Go Cong Province is now producing increased volumes of pesticide free Barbados cherries for export to Japan, while minority hill tribes in the Moc Chau district have harvested their first crop of ripe peaches in 10 years, leading to a four-fold increase in annual incomes.”
Professor Drew said that from the outset, the Queensland Government provided considerable momentum and diplomatic support to ensure the success of the project.
The project has been so successful that the International Centre for Management of Pest Fruit Flies at Griffith University has just opened a regional office in Malaysia in collaboration with the Government of Malaysia.
“That office will service all 10 ASEAN nations and will be well positioned to do even more research to aid fruit growers in this region of the world,” Professor Drew said.
“Fruit flies cost Australia $300 million a year in controls and lost production while they cause losses of $1 billion a year in South-East Asia.”
In 2000, Kingaroy-born Professor Drew received the Clunies Ross National Science and Technology Award for his “outstanding commitment to successful innovation involving the application of science and technology for the benefit of Australia.”
He has set up quarantine programs in northern Australia, South-East Asia and the South Pacific and trained hundreds of fruit fly scientists who are helping to protect agriculture in almost every country of the region.
www.griffith.edu.au/text/centre/icmpff/
Last reviewed 19 January 2006
Photos courtesy of Dr Vijay Shanmugam, Griffith University