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High-risk fly threat on red hot chilli peppers
25 October 2000
A 90 gram bag of fresh chillies recently mailed into Australia contained a high-risk exotic fruit fly which could have wreaked havoc with Australia's horticulture industries.
The chillies were detected at the QANTAS Mail Handling Unit in Sydney through the cooperative work of the Australian Customs Service and the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service.
A single male Malaysian Fruit Fly (Bactrocera latifrons) was found by quarantine officers in the plastic-wrapped tray of chillies which was part of a bigger parcel identified for further checking after going through a Customs X-ray unit.
The Malaysian Fruit Fly is a pest with the potential to cause damage of economic significance to Australia. The fly is a major pest of solanaceous crops such as chilli, capsicum, eggplant and tomato.
The fly is found throughout South East Asia and the Indian sub-continent. It was introduced into Hawaii on chillies last decade and is now a serious pest in that US State.
The fly is not present in Australia.
Subsequent pathology testing by AQIS found that the chillies were also affected by anthracnose, know as 'ripe rot', which is caused by the fungus Colletotrichum gloeosporioides. Although the fungus is already found in Australia, its discovery on items sent through the post shows how other new and destructive plant diseases could gain entry to Australia unless vigilance is maintained.
The Malaysian Fruit Fly could potentially be at least as damaging as the 1995 Papaya Fruit Fly incursion in north Queensland which cost $35 million to eradicate over three years, and many more millions of dollars in lost horticulture export sales.
More than 160 million articles of mail enter Australia each year and many contain items of high-risk quarantine concern.
AQIS uses a combination of tools such as X-ray units, detector dogs, physical inspection and profiling in association with the Customs to intercept items of risk in international mail. In the last 12 months quarantine officers have seized 50,000 high-risk items in international mail.
For more details
Contact: David Finlayson
Phone: (02) 6272 5234
Mobile: 0414 266 256