ABSTRACT
Blueberry maggot, Rhagoletis mendax Curran, is a key pest of blueberries, Vaccinium spp., from Nova Scotia southward into Georgia and northern Florida. Current monitoring practices for R. mendax rely on both visual and olfactory stimuli and include the use of ammoniumbaited Pherocon AM yellow sticky panels (Prokopy and Coli, 1978) and green sticky spheres (Liburd et al., 1998). A principal problem with ammonium baits is that they attract non-target insects including beneficiáis (Liburd et al., 2000). Furthermore, ammonium acetate appears to lose its attractiveness to R. mendax as flies reach sexual maturity. Our objective was to increase selectivity and late-season captures of blueberry maggot fly (BMF) using a two-phase study involving both field and laboratory experiments. Phase I will determine if R. mendax is responsive to volatiles emitted from ripening blueberries and phase II would identify and screen synthetic host-volatile compounds for their attractiveness to R. mendax in the field as well as to evaluate release rates of potential volatile compounds for monitoring R. mendax.
