Officials Will Test Medfly Spray Today Over Irvine Grove

They sprayed malathion and tried matchmaking with sterile mates, but the little pests kept swarming back. Now they’re going for the lipstick dye.

Officials hope the kiss of death for the crop-destroying Mediterranean fruit fly will be “SureDye,” a red and yellow dye blend used to make pink lipstick.

Today, agriculture officials will launch a helicopter assault on thousands of sterile medflies released during the last three weeks in an Irvine orange grove, in the first such test of SureDye in California.

Officials hope this latest weapon will avoid the public outrage that aerial spraying of malathion sparked, because SureDye already is used in many products, including Pepto-Bismol. It is nontoxic to humans and other animals, they say, and will not dye anything pink.

“This looks like a promising alternative,” said John Connell, chief of the pest detection branch of the state Department of Food and Agriculture in Sacramento. “It’s not going to be a magic bullet for every situation, but it’s another tool.”

Roy Cunningham, director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s tropical fruit and vegetable research lab in Hilo, Hawaii, said the dye has had a 90% mortality rate in small-scale tests conducted on the island.

But today the dye will be tested on a large scale for the first time.

In preparation for the test, agricultural workers have released 76,000 sterile medflies a week in a 63-acre orange grove near Culver Drive and Irvine Boulevard and at another 56-acre grapefruit orchard about four miles away.

A helicopter hired by agriculture officials will fly at treetop level and dump the dye over the orange grove in weekly applications that may continue for up to 10 weeks. The grapefruit orchard will not be treated during that time.

To measure the effectiveness of the dye, researchers will set traps in the orange and grapefruit groves after the orange grove spraying and compare the number of flies caught.

Medflies die when exposed to low concentrations of bait mixed with dye, which destroys cells in the fly’s stomach, Cunningham said.

“We don’t think that this will cause the concern that [malathion] has, because people are eating it right now in lipstick and antacids,” Cunningham said. “But we hope it proves to be an efficient way to protect the agriculture industry.”