Carambola fly: Map declares phytosanitary emergency in four states

The Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock (Mapa) published today (13/11) Ordinance No. 627 declaring a state of phytosanitary emergency for the current quarantine pest Bactrocera carambolae (carambola fly) in the states of Amapá, Amazonas, Pará and Roraima. The declaration will be valid for one year and relates to the imminent risk of dispersion and the potential damage that this pest could cause to the sector.

The guidelines and measures to be adopted to combat the situation will be briefly indicated in an Act by the Minister of Agriculture and Livestock, Carlos Fávaro. However, some actions are already underway within the scope of the Agricultural Defense Secretariat of Mapa, such as the delimitation of the area under quarantine in the state of Pará and the review of the operational procedures and control protocol currently instituted for the pest, through of Normative Instruction No. 28/2017.

Brazil is the third largest fruit producer in the world and the carambola fly is the main threat to maintaining the already established and constantly expanding export markets for fruit growing. Currently the plague is restricted to the states of Amapá, Pará and Roraima.

Carambola fly monitoring

To eradicate the pest, Mapa coordinates a program that involves combat actions in the states where it is found, in addition to monitoring in areas without occurrence throughout the country. However, adverse factors such as the increase in migratory flow (foreigners from countries where the pest occurs) and the internal trade in fruit, combined with conditions favorable to the establishment of the pest (variety and availability of host crops), in addition to technical difficulties in monitoring and inspecting the transit of hosts has favored the increase in captures of the pest in the states of Pará and Roraima.

In April, an area under quarantine was declared for the state of Roraima, by Ordinance No. 780. The status implies a ban on the transit of fruits that host the pest to other states. The Bactrocera carambolae pest causes damage not only to starfruit, but to several other fruits such as guava, acerola, tangerine, cashew, cherry, among others.

In Pará, the recent detections of new outbreaks of the plague in the municipalities of Oriximiná and Terra Santa, located in a region with a very high flow of people and goods, caused the condition of an imminent risk of spreading the plague to the other units of the Federation without occurrence and , in particular, for the main fruit growing hubs in Brazil.

The state of Amazonas, despite still being an area without the occurrence of the pest, was included in the condition of phytosanitary emergency due to outbreaks detected in a region close to its border with Pará, as well as the high flow of travelers and products from from Roraima.