Spotted Wing Drosophila Insecticide Efficacy
Updated info on this pest can be found on The Sustainable Spotted Wing Drosophila Project website. If you haven’t found this website, take some time when you can to browse the site and see what is there.
Of particular interest to many growers is the "2021 ranking of insecticides for their performance against spotted-wing Drosophila" document compiled by this group. Ratings are provided by project entomologists, growers, and crop consultants with experience with spotted wing drosophila from across the country and are compiled by Phillip Fanning (University of Maine) and Rufus Isaacs (Michigan State University). Â The article includes a graph that makes relative efficacy rankings easy to see and a second graph that color-codes products by chemical class to make it easy to rotate chemistries. Rotating product chemistries is important, as resistance has already been found in some spotted wing drosophila populations.
It should be noted that some of the rankings are based on limited data, and sometimes there is variation in the ratings assigned by different contributors. If no error bar appears on top of the vertical bar indicating efficacy for a particular product, that means that only one rating was received. If the error bar is large, this is an indication of variability in how well different contributors thought the product worked, so the rating should be taken with a "grain of salt." A small error bar means more consensus in the rating.
As a supplement to the information provided on the project website, a downloadable table is provided (link below) that also lists the active ingredients of each product rated, IRAC codes, berry crops on which these products can be used, and the days-to-harvest and re-entry intervals for each. If the pre-harvest interval shows different variations, that is because it varies with the product, use rate, or another factor as specified on the product labels.
Note that spotted wing drosophila does not appear on the labels of all products listed; when that is the case, whether the material can be used for spotted wing drosophila depends on regulations in each state. Not all products are registered for use in all states. If from outside of PA, consult the label and your state’s registrations for products that may be used in your location. (R) following the pesticide name indicates that the material is a restricted-use pesticide.
