Fruit Fly Traps

A fruit fly outbreak in Australia has the potential to close export markets overnight. As a result there is  a need for close monitoring and swift deployment of control measures if an outbreak is detected. To detect fruit fly outbreaks, Australian state governments operate fruit fly monitoring grids. These grids utilise thousands of pheromone-based traps. This creates a huge overhead cost, as current methods mean each trap is manually visited and inspected for fruit fly capture..

In partnership with entomologists from CSIRO Agriculture we are developing a new generation of low-cost, low-maintenance fruit fly traps. These traps can automatically and reliably detect the capture of a fruit fly, collect photographic evidence, and notify relevant authorities.  The addition of wireless communications permits a more timely notification of an outbreak.  A large scale implementation of the CSIRO’s fruit fly traps are more cost effect than current manual inspection.