Pest Profile: Spotted Wing Drosophila
The spotted wing drosophila (SWD) is a relatively new pest in the USA that attacks fruit plants. While the SWD can attack a wide range of soft-bodied summer fruits, its favorite plants are raspberry and blackberry. It is also a grave threat to cherries, peaches, nectarines, and grapes. The SWD is a vinegar fly that originated from southeast Asia. It migrated to Hawaii in the 1980s and was spotted in the continental USA starting in August of 2008.
It has spread from California all the way to Florida and North Carolina. This pest poses a serious threat to fruit crops and can inflict sizable economic losses to agricultural areas.
To check if your garden has SWD, make a simple trap made of a plastic drinking cup. Make sure the cup is transparent so you can see its contents. Put some vinegar made from apple cider in the cup. To boost the cup's ability to attract SWD, wrap yellow sticky cards around it-bugs are attracted to bright yellow. The yellow sticky cards are optional, but they boost your trap's ability to attract these bugs.
