The old saying is “my enemy’s enemy is my friend”; and that could be very true for tree fruit growers across the Pacific Northwest, and the entire United States. Researchers at Washington State University recently confirmed the discovery of a parasitoid wasp, a natural enemy of the spotted-wing drosophila.

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Betsy Beers, with WSU’s Department of Entomology says the wasp was found in NW Washington in a wild blackberry patch less than a mile from the Canadian border, near Lynden, back in September. Beers said one of their goals for 2022 is to find out how far this parasitoid has spread across the Northwest, allowing them to determine where releases need to take place.

“If we’re successful and if all goes well, that should speed up the rearing and release process by at least a couple of years, over what would have already happened with the permitted release that will come from the quarantine facility at UC Riverside.”

Beers compared the Parasitoids to the 1979 movie Alien, where the female lay eggs inside of he drosophila larvae and the little parasitoid develop inside of the drosophila, killing it in the process. She noted parasitoids are fairly susceptible to insecticides.

“So if you are using insecticides for control of spotted-wing, you’re likely to knock down those parasitoids too.  But, out in those unmanaged areas, that’s where we think the parasitoid can really have an impact in keeping the populations down.”

The USDA recently approved one of the parasitoids to be used and distributed around the U.S. as a biocontrol.




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