Comparative Ovipositional Preference of the Peach Fruit Fly, Bactrocera zonata (Saunders) (Diptera: Tephritidae) for Selected Fruits under Free-Choice Laboratory Setting

Abstract

whereas, 30-100% in vegetables (Syed et al., 1970;Sapkota et al., 2010). Tephritid genus Bactrocera is comprised of 50 extremely destructive polyphagous pest species. Among these, Bactrocera zonata (Saunders), the peach fruit fly, cause severe losses to over 55 fruit hosts, including mango, peach, apricot, guava, banana, apple and fig (White and Elson-Harris, 1992;Ghanim, 2009;Delrio and Cocco, 2010).The fruit flies favor laying eggs on hosts that pro-Abstract | Bactrocera zonata (Saunders), the peach fruit fly is a severe pest of many important fruits in Pakistan causing massive economic losses. Experiments were executed to reveal the ovipositional preference of B. zonata for four selected fruits belonging to different plant families, viz., banana (Musa acuminate), persimmon (Diospyros kaki), apple (Malus domestica) and tomato (Solanum lycopersicum). The study was performed under free choice conditions by exposing all the tested fruits in the same arena to B. zonata female adults. Results revealed that tested biological parameters were significantly affected by the tested host except sex ratio. However, banana was found the most preferred host with maximum number of pupae recovery (298 ), maximum emerged flies (185) followed by persimmon, apple whereas tomato was least preferred host with lowest number of pupae (06) and flies emerged (05) respectively. Thus, it is concluded that banana fruit can be used as natural host for rearing of B. zonata in the laboratory due to its consistent availability.