Fruit fly prevention

[procyon]

I've been growing hot chili peppers for a while now with mixed success. Managed to control the aphids and whitefly but I'm losing a large portion of the crop to fruit flies which bore a tiny hole in the pod to lay eggs. The larvae then eat the chili from the inside.

I've tried setting traps with apple cider vingar but they catch more butterflies than fruit flies.

Anything available in Thailand that will prevent them or does anyone have any tips to stop fruit flies?

Thanks.

[cooked]

Netting, but chili plants like the sun. I had moderate success with wood vinegar/neem oil sprays but I had to repeat every week. I don't have any problems during the dry season with them.

[drtreelove]

The hot new organic fruit fly bait here in the US is GF-120, a spinosad product from Dow Agrosciences. I doubt if it's available in Thailand, but worth a search. It's not cheap. I haven't used it myself, but I've bought it for a landscaper associate who is using it successfully for his customer's olive fruit fly control for about 100 trees, small commercial orchard. I don't know about chili fruit flies, but probably from the same genus of Tephritid fruit flies. For trees its sprayed up into the inner canopy, onto lower leaf surfaces and woody stems with a backpack sprayer calibrated for large droplet size. Timing is everything. I wish I had it available when I managed a mango orchard in Chiang Mai. What a pain they are so aggressive. The conventional chemical treatment is repeated sprays through the infestation cycle with a strong residual insecticide like chlorpyrifos, an organophosphate. Probably not a good alternative for the chilies you consume or sell.

GF 120 Label.pdf

GF-120-NF-QA.pdf

[drtreelove]

I would try a combination of a neem oil extract product (repellent, anti-feedant, reproductive disruptor) to hopefully prevent the flies from ovipositing, and a knockdown and repellent product with aromatic oils like rosemary, peppermint.

http://www.zoecon.com/uploads/products/Essentria_IC3_label.pdf