Spotted Wing Drosophila, a well-known pest that infests ripe, ready-to-eat fruit, poses a significant threat to farmers because it is very difficult to control with standard pesticides. A new approach to tackling this pest involves manipulating the behavior of these insects by disguising healthy fruit as if it were infected with an unappealing pathogen.
By studying the specific odors emitted by infected fruit, researchers have identified the chemicals that repel the flies when applied to healthy fruit and are developing a slow-release device to disperse these fruity odors in the field, ensuring that they do not come into direct contact with the fruit. This method provides a new tool to help farmers protect their crops without relying exclusively on insecticides.
Source: USDA
Image: USDA
07 Dec 2023
The approach shows excellent performance in cherry recognition. It is remarkable that the training time of Swin Transformer and MLP was only 78.43 seconds (when in the absence of MLP the training time was 551.24 seconds) and that their recognition accuracy peaked at 98.5%.
07 Oct 2024
Cherry Times Magazine is back in print and digital format full of content, news and information on the world of cherries. Pick up your free copy at Fruit Attraction (Madrid) in the Press Area!
27 May 2026
A field study in China’s Zhejiang province assesses heat tolerance in five sweet cherry rootstocks. Lanting and Colt stand out for leaf resilience, antioxidant defense and hormonal balance, providing practical guidance for orchards facing longer, hotter and more extreme summers.
27 May 2026
Uzbekistan and FAO strengthen sustainable sweet cherry value chain through OCOP and FAO-China South-South Cooperation, focusing on innovation, traceability, logistics, lower post-harvest losses and international market access to support rural incomes and export growth now.
