ABSTRACT
Several species of tephritid fruit flies are major threats to many agricultural fruit crops. Quality Control is a system for maintaining desired standards in production and in a product. This chapter reviews the progress that has been made in attempting to develop bioassays that evaluate the effectiveness of mass reared flies in the field. Good dispersal ability by mass reared flies is critical to the success of an sterile insect technique (SIT) program. Poor fliers will be lost quickly in hostile environments or will be unable to locate and compete with wild populations at mating sites. Recycling of a percentage of the spent medfly diet was studied in an effort to reduce waste and save expenses at the Guatemala mass rearing facility. A growing body of literature consistently shows that larger flies outperform smaller flies in laboratory tests. Mating incompatibility between wild and sterile released fruit flies may be one of the major causes of failure of SIT programs.
