Pests at Bay

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 943, 9 April 1930, Page 8

Pests at Bay

REPELLING INSECT HORDES

AX eagle-ej r ed vigilance prevents an invasion of New Zealand by a voracious liorde that seeks incessantly to gain entrance through the country’s seaports. Were the defences to fail the results would be speedy and serious. Many plant plagues have a potentiality for destruction in their particular fields greater than that of the bubonic plague on the human race, but the organisation of the defences is efficient and watchfulness never flags.

The Pacific Islands are infested with many species of fruit flies, some of them so strong that they attack coconuts. In the eyes of one coconut, examined in Auckland, as many as 1,000 fly grubs were round. A passenger on a steamer brought two big oranges as a present for his children. A fruit inspector saw then; in his pocket and demanded that they be submitted for inspection. Hundreds of New Hebrides and Mediterranean fly grubs were found in the two oranges, and hundreds of flies were hatched out in the experimental office of the inspection department. The Mediterranean fly has established itself in Queensland and New South Wales; its speciality is the attacking of peaches and nectarines; but it is not averse from dining on oranges and lemons and its grub is not readily killed by rough handling. In a consignment of peaches, landed in New Zealand from the refrigerators of a boat from Africa, these grubs were found and hatched into quite healthy flies. The ravages of codlin moth have cost New Zealanders millions of pounds in the last halfcentury; just how it came here is hot known, but it may have been imported with the trees brought into the colony in the early days. Forty years ago it developed into, a general pest.

Many people consider that this was about the time when a consignment of infected fruit from America was condemned and dumped in the old reclamation along Customs Street. Boys feasted on the rejects. Beans from Cyprus have been found to contain a weevil, as have kumaras from the Cook Islands and Fiji. The tasty peanut is likely to be a bearer of pests; those from Japan harbouring the meal moth. Centipedes have been extracted from pines; big ones, six or eight inches long. A score of blight and scale diseases have to be searched for

in potatoes, cereals and fruit, and though the fruit and produce inspectors may repel invasion there may be avenues through which pests may get in. Thus, some hay packing around machinery was found on one occasion in the goods sheds on the wharf. A cursory inspection revealed that the hay was full of apple prunings; most of which were thickly coated with scale diseases. Timber and poles were not subject to inspection at any time, and many species of borer moths and ants were given free entry into the Dominion. Fire blight is a tree plague that spreads as quickly among trees as influenza does among human kind. It secured a footing in New Zealand years ago, but was thought to be confined to the North. In 1921 it was found spreading over the Bay of plenty. Hawthorn hedges and pear trees were found to be widely infected. Ruthless destruction of these trees, sacrificing the healthy with the infected, checked the spread of the infection. In 1917 the Mediterranean fly was discovered in Ponsonby and Devonport. A 12 months’ active campaign was waged and since then there has not been any sign of the pest. Flowers, too, are found to carry diseases. Narcissus bulbs have to be examind with the utmost care, for narcissus fly, the grub of which eats the heart of the bulbous root of the plant. In fending off the hordes menacing the Dominion we must act with iron resolution. Hardship and complaints of money losses on imports are not allowed to prevail, fly-infected fruit is immediately destroyed, fungoidinfested shipments are treated with appropriate solutions, and scale diseases are attacked by fumigation. The fruit and produce inspection department stands as a first line defence, guarding the portals of the country. T.W.