The Economic Impacts and Management of Spotted Wing Drosophila (Drosophila Suzukii): The Case of Wild Blueberries in Maine

摘要

(Matsumura), or spotted wing drosophila, has become a major pest concern for berry growers in the United States. In this study, we evaluated the economic impacts of on the Maine wild blueberry industry from two perspectives. The first analysis estimated the state-level economic impacts of on the wild blueberry industry in Maine in the absence of control. We found that could result in drastic revenue losses to the industry, which could be over $6.8 million under the worst-case scenario (assuming a 30% yield reduction). In the second analysis, we used Monte Carlo simulation to compare the expected revenues under different management strategies for a typical wild blueberry farm in Maine. The analysis focused on a decision-making week during the harvesting season, which the grower can choose in between three control strategies: no-control, early harvest, or insecticide application. The results suggested that insecticide applications are not economically optimal in most low infestation risk scenarios. Furthermore, although the early harvest strategy is one of the strategies to avoid infestations for wild blueberry production in Maine, the tradeoff is the revenue loss from the unripe crop. Using the simulation results, we summarized optimal harvest timing regarding the fruit maturity level under different infestation risk scenarios, which can minimize the revenue loss from adopting the early harvest management strategy.