Identifying strawberries and raspberries with resistance to spotted wing drosophila

NIAB

Project objectives

Spotted wing drosophila is the biggest pest for soft fruit and stone fruit growers, and is expensive to control. Traditional ways to manage the pest include netting and physical traps, as well as using pesticides as a last resort. If we can find accessions of strawberry and raspberry that have resistance to spotted wing drosophila and put them into a breeding programme, it would allow the industry to move away from other costly control options. “We need funding for all sorts of research projects; Growing Kent & Medway seems to be a really useful route to be able to find research grants that will benefit growers in Kent.” Chris Rose, Commercial Controller, Asplins PO Based in Faversham, Asplins Producer Organisation has 11 growers in their cooperative and sell over £100m of fruit annually. Project: Screening for resistance to spotted wing drosophila in strawberry and raspberry accessions