Neglected backyard fruit trees continue to be a threat to the Goulburn Valley’s billion dollar fruit industry, a seminar heard this week.
Unmanaged residential fruit trees become hosts for the Queensland fruit fly pest and escape into neighbouring orchards.
A Shepparton forum heard that the Goulburn and Murray valleys were particularly vulnerable to this situation because of the number of urban communities neighbouring the region’s intensive orchards.
But the region has suffered diminishing Victorian Government funding for the control and awareness program over the past five years.
Earlier programs funded the removal of unwanted fruit trees at the request of residents, but the service had to be dropped when the funding level halved.
New City of Greater Shepparton Mayor Geoff Akers and council chief executive Fiona Le Gassick met with Victorian Agriculture Minister Michaela Settle last week but they were unable to secure a guarantee of future funding or a return to earlier funding levels.
The industry is seeking up to a million dollars annually for the award-winning ‘No flies on us’ control and awareness program.
Fruit growers at Wednesday night’s forum warned that incursions of fruit fly from residential backyards were putting the GV’s export industry at risk.
What residents can do to to help:
- Regularly inspect homegrown fruit
- Pick up fallen and rotten fruit and veggies
- Place traps to monitor for activity
- Use netting, baits and traps (available from nurseries)
- Prune fruit trees
- Remove unwanted and unmanaged trees
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