The South African deciduous fruit industry has announced the launch of a "Centre of Excellence" dedicated to pest monitoring and safeguarding. The new center, spearheaded by the industry association Hortgro, was created to address the increasing challenges the industry is suffering due to invasive pests and diseases. 

The center will be built to expand the efforts of FruitFly Africa (FFA), an operating company that has managed pest monitoring services since 2001. The organization has been instrumental in tracking and controlling pests like the Mediterranean fruit fly across all major deciduous fruit production areas with different initiatives.

Some of them are the monitoring of 6,000 traps, the release of millions of sterile Mediterranean fruit flies annually to manage populations, and the coordination of a total of 42 statutory aerial baiting applications (with GF-120NF) which covered a total of more than 176,000 hectares of commercial orchards and vineyards.

Hotgro Executive Director, Anton Rabe, said there is an urgent need for comprehensive pest surveillance in the face of new pests increasingly threatening the industry’s sustainability and profitability.

"We must understand where pests occur and where they don’t, as this directly influences crop protection strategies and practices,” Rabe said.