Irradiation as a quarantine treatment against Rhagoletis mendax and R. pomonella
For quarantine treatments, prevention of adult emergence is used as a criterion to assess the efficacy of irradiation against fruit flies. This criterion gave satisfactory results for tropical fruit flies that do not diapause, but cannot be used for Rhagoletis species which must be brought out of diapause by lengthy and generally unreliable procedures. Rhagoletis species are known to diapause as phanerocephalic pupa. Laboratory studies were done on Rhagoletis mendax and R. pomonella (both EPPO A1 quarantine pests) to determine whether prevention of this stage could be used as a criterion to assess irradiation efficacy. Results showed that prevention of phanerocephalic pupa could be used as a satisfactory criterion. Irradiation of 3rd instar larvae in fruits (apples and blueberries) at doses of 58 Gy and 24 Gy for R. pomonella and R. mendax, respectively, prevented the appearance of the phanerocephalic stage (at the 99% level, required in quarantine treatments).
Sources
Hallman, G.J.; Thomas, D.B. (1999) Gamma irradiation quarantine treatment against blueberry maggot and apple maggot (Diptera: Tephritidae).
Journal of Economic Entomology, 92(6), 1373-1376.