Oriental Fruit Fly Found in Santa Paula : Agriculture: Officials say it’s too early to worry about harm to citrus and avocado industries. The pest was last discovered in the county in 1992.

County agriculture officials discovered an Oriental fruit fly in Santa Paula during routine testing, but the county’s deputy agriculture chief says it is too early to panic about harm to the area’s multimillion-dollar citrus and avocado industries.

“We’ve only found one unmated female fly so far,” said Kerry Bustamante, deputy agriculture commissioner for Ventura County. “There have been many single finds all over California this year.”

Single flies were found in San Mateo, Contra Costa, Santa Clara, Orange and Los Angeles counties earlier this year, Bustamante said. A single Oriental fruit fly was last found in Ventura County in 1992 in Simi Valley.

“I don’t think it’s something to worry about right now,” said Tom Pecht, a lemon and avocado grower in Oxnard and past president of the Ventura County Farm Bureau. “They only found one, and they’re pretty easy to control anyway.”

The Oriental fruit fly is related to the Mediterranean fruit fly, whose infestation in Camarillo last fall forced county officials to launch an aerial pesticide attack while quarantining fruit in an 86-square-mile area for 10 months. The quarantine was lifted July 30.

Both flies’ larvae destroy fruits and vegetables such as tomatoes, avocados, oranges and lemons--crops grown in great quantities in Ventura County.

But there are differences. The Oriental fruit fly is bigger than the Medfly, but more importantly, it is easier to kill.

Male Oriental fruit flies react strongly to a malevolent potion designed to attract--and then kill--them. A chemical called methyl eugenol piques their interest, and then the pesticide Naled finishes them off.

With the males out of the way, the females die without reproducing.

Obliterating Medflies is far more complicated and often involves the use of malathion, a pesticide that some see as a risk to public health. There is no known male Medfly lure.

County agriculture officials found the single fruit fly at a testing site in Santa Paula on Wednesday but were not sure what type it was until Thursday. County officials regularly inspect nearly 1,600 detection traps throughout the county, Bustamante said.

Agriculture officials will place about 50 additional traps near the Santa Paula site and check them daily, she said. Traps within an eight-mile radius will be checked every other day.

If more flies are found, county officials will begin addressing how to control an infestation, most likely by placing some of the killer pesticide mixture atop telephone polls, Bustamante said.

County officials were cautiously optimistic that the discovery would not lead to an infestation. Past infestations have led to quarantines in Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino and San Diego counties in previous years.

There has never been an infestation in the county, Bustamante said, but the San Fernando Valley was infested with the pest in 1993.

Single fruit flies can enter the county in a variety of ways, Bustamante said.

“It could be that the larva was the only one that survived from one piece of fruit brought in,” she said.