13 July 2016

Darryl Barbour, Plant Health Australia’s National Manager, Fruit Fly Council, met with Ryan McAllister from CSIRO about the RapidAIM project.

RapidAIM is developing automated fruit fly traps that can send images of what’s in a trap to a mobile device or desktop computer. They discussed how this technology could reduce the costs of manually checking traps every week, and how real time monitoring could contribute to the improved management of fruit flies in the future.

They also discussed the quarantine conditions required for fruit flies in domestic and international trade and how a ‘systems approach’ might be designed to take into account fruit fly pressures, in-field management and post-harvest practices.