spotted wing drosophilia

I'm looking for permies who've had dealings with this 'new' pest.  I've read some articles on 'organic control' measures for this pesky fly.  I'm curious if anyone has a permaculture approach to these fellas.  I've ever bearing strawberries and raspberries that they love to destroy.

I have the same problem. My only strategy is just harvest what they don't get. I noticed  my gooseberries and currants did not get effected. However the raspberries and blackberries got nailed. The earlier producing berries were not fed on so the hatch must be more mid to late summer. So my strategy is multiple species and varieties.

I too have currants and gooseberries, which they don't seem to mess with. They attack my raspberries and Strawberries in July-August. I'm not willing to give up on growing raspberries and strawberries though. I thought of netting them, but that seems like a ton of work and use of resources. I would like to find a more 'permaculture' way of dealing with them.

This is one of two Drosophila suzukii threads we have seen at permies.com, the more recent one. We are working on a non-pesticide method against D. suzukii, though info will not be disclosed until ready to be demonstrated (and defended against critique). One of the most disturbing things about this fly is that its serrated ovipositor was never publicly described to science at the time of its discovery (1916), and if it was, it was published only in Japanese. We are also investigating the evolution of this ovipositor, and this has links to the ovipositor of the Olive fly of the Mediterranean region.

Note the mystification of Spotted Wing Drosophila history beginning from the year 1916:

Aronia SWD Group
https://lists.illinois.edu/lists/info/aswd

We leave the esoterica behind by pointing to Jafari's post about figs. This is a very important post:

Home Orchard Society
www.homeorchardsociety.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=4033

1.) The ease of access of larvae (not necessarily D. suzukii larvae): figs are particularly susceptible due to their very morphology, aka, the way they are constructed.

2.) If Jafari could document D/ suzukii on those figs, it would link to Coimbatore where another serrated ovipositor species links back to the evolution of D. suzukii: D. biarmipes. In fact, D. suzukii was first misidentified as D. biarmipes when first dscovered in California. D. biarmipes was first discovered at Coimbatore, India, in 1920. It was found on Melia azaderach. The obvious thing to do is to build a time machine and go back to Coimbatore to see how far away the figs were from the Melia in 1920.

this URL may suffice:

www.homeorchardsociety.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=4033&start=0&view=print

After retrieving the website, the reader now has evidence for the chemistry of the evolution of the serrated ovipositor of spotted wing Drosophila by comparing Melia and Ficus for the closely-related D. armipes. In addition, the evolution of D. suzukii includes the Elaeagnaceae of southeast Asia as well as D. suzukii found on Elaeagnus umbellata in Japan. The link is precisely to Elaeagnus species in North America, and it was Lewis of the Lewis and Clark expedition who first collected buffalo berries along the Missouri River. Therefore, alternate host plants for D. suzukii would be Elaeagnus in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, etc. in addition to the potential for developing pesticide resistance. Composting does not affect D. suzukii. Composting does not break down D. suzukii pesticides used against them.

I have 15 large mature cherry trees from the 1950s, and here in the Okanagan SWD has appeared in the last few years. So far organic growers have been using Entrust, and some who wish not to spray at all are using Kootenay Covers, a fine mesh fabric to cover the trees. The covers work well, but are perhaps too expensive for large scale applications.

I have read several scientific studies pointing to the effectiveness of peppermint oil and thyme oil as repellents for the flies, and so I plan on giving that a try this year, as well as following Michael Philips Holistic Spray protocol. (Neem, EM, Liquid Fish, Kelp)

We'll see how it goes this year. We also have chickens and Muscovy ducks running under the trees to try to break the Pest cycles.