Agriculture officials recently established a Mediterranean fruit fly (Ceratitis capitata or Medfly) quarantine and expanded an Asian citrus psyllid (ACP) quarantine, both in California.
MEDFLY
Federal and state agriculture officials on Oct. 18 established the Medfly quarantine in California’s Los Angeles County. The action was taken by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (USDA APHIS) and the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA).
The establishment of the Medfly quarantine is in response to the confirmed detection of two adult male Medflies in the Leimert Park area by CDFA on Sept. 27 from a trap in a persimmon tree in a residential area. The quarantine area encompasses approximately 69 square miles of Los Angeles County. There is no commercial agriculture in the quarantine area.
APHIS is applying safeguarding measures and restrictions on the interstate movement or entry into foreign trade of regulated articles from the area to prevent the pest’s spread to non-infested areas of the United States. APHIS is working with CDFA and the agricultural commissioner of Los Angeles County to respond to these detections following program guidelines for survey, treatment and regulatory actions.
The establishment of the quarantine area is reflected on the APHIS fruit fly website, which contains a description of all current federal fruit fly quarantine areas.
Additional information on the quarantine areas is available from USDA APHIS Fruit Fly National Policy Manager Richard Johnson at 301-851-2109 or richard.n.johnson@usda.gov.
There have been other fruit fly quarantines in California this year. Get the details here.
ASIAN CITRUS PSYLLID
USDA APHIS announced Nov. 6 that in cooperation with CDFA, it is expanding the areas quarantined for the HLB-spreading ACP in California. APHIS is expanding the quarantine areas to include the entire counties of Fresno, Kern, San Luis Obispo and Tulare. Due to the logistical challenges associated with an expanding 5-mile buffer from subsequent detections of ACP, CDFA established county-level quarantines for ACP in California. Parallel to CDFA’s quarantine, due to ACP detections, APHIS is also adding 18 new counties in California: Alameda, Contra Costa, Kings, Madera, Marin, Merced, Monterey, Placer, Sacramento, San Benito, San Francisco, San Joaquin, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, Sonoma, Stanislaus and Yolo.
APHIS is applying safeguarding measures on the interstate movement of regulated articles from the quarantined areas in California. These measures parallel the intrastate quarantines that CDFA established. This action is necessary to prevent the spread of huanglongbing (HLB) by ACP to non‑infested areas of the United States.
The specific changes to the ACP quarantine areas can be found here.
Source: USDA APHIS
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