Has any experienced this Papaya Issue

[MarinFla]

I have 5 Papaya Trees that I grew from seed and planted out almost a year ago. I finally got a couple of mature tree ripened fruit. I am now strongly considering chopping them down. I cut open the fruit and found grubs or some kind of maggot inside it crawling around in amongst the seeds and it totally grossed me out!!! What kind of bug was able to do that and how do I stop it! If I can't get good papayas then the trees are slotted for destruction!

[fruitlovers]

Those are probably fruit fly larvae. Very easy to remedy: pick your papayas when they are just beginning to turn yellow. Bring them indoors to continue ripening.

[Tropicdude]

Exactly ! Papaya will ripen up just as good on the counter, as soon as you have just a hint of yellow, 10-20% take em off and put on your kitchen counter to finish ripening.

another option, is to bag the fruit,  when they are immature green, just get a paper bag, and cover the whole fruit.   paper bags with that waxy finish are best because of the rain.   this technique is used for mangoes in some places, where fruit flies are out of control.

[fruitlovers]

I have 5 Papaya Trees that I grew from seed and planted out almost a year ago. I finally got a couple of mature tree ripened fruit. I am now strongly considering chopping them down. I cut open the fruit and found grubs or some kind of maggot inside it crawling around in amongst the seeds and it totally grossed me out!!! What kind of bug was able to do that and how do I stop it! If I can't get good papayas then the trees are slotted for destruction!

You should slot the fruit flies for destruction, not the trees. BTW if you figure out how to destroy the fruit flies once and for all then you will be a multi millionaire, maybe billionaire, over night. These pesky flies probably cause billions of dollars of damage globally to agriculture per year!

[Carbo]

Definitely the papaya fruit fly.  A few years back I grew a papaya tree and I was warned about this pest.  Kept my eye on the tree and the adult flies were numerous and easy to see as they injected the papaya with eggs. . .which soon became those disgusting maggots you saw.  The only solution, for me at least, was to individually bag the fruits.  Too much bother for a fruit I don't particularly like.  The tree came down.

[Hollywood]

Are some cultivars more resilient than others? My Red Lady never had that problem. I have a couple Red Maradols now, but they are just now mature enough to start flowering.

[murahilin]

Here are some articles that may help you:
http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/pdffiles/MG/MG05400.pdf

http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/pi053

http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/pdffiles/IN/IN14800.pdf


If you don't want to use pesticides, bagging the fruit when they are young seems to be one of the best methods to prevent the fruit fly from laying its eggs.

[ofdsurfer]

How early should you start the bagging process?  As soon as the fruit sets?

[murahilin]

How early should you start the bagging process?  As soon as the fruit sets?

Here is a quote from the third link I posted:

"Bagging can be an effective control measure for the fruit
fly in small plantings (one to 25 plants or less than 1/10
hectare). Bagging should begin when the fruit is small,
shortly after the flowers have fallen off. Each fruit should
be enclosed in a paper bag or rolled tube of newspaper and
tied around the stem. This method can be very practical
and successful if enough labor is available. Attention to
covering new fruit and increasing the covering as the fruits
increase in size is necessary"

[MarinFla]

I wouldn't have thought those little fruit flies would produce maggots that big. They were the size of maggots of full sized flies. They were easily as long as the width of the fingernail on my index finger. Pretty revolting! Would wrapping them in screen material work?

[fruitlovers]

How early should you start the bagging process?  As soon as the fruit sets?

If you decide to use bagging method you bag the fruits right before they start to turn color and ripen, so you bag fully grown fruit.
Personally i think that is a big waste of time and not necessary in most situations. There are hundreds of acres of commercial  papaya orchards here and not one single papaya farmer here does any bagging. (I live in largest US papaya growing area.)
In Australia i've heard it's a very different story. There bagging or netting papaya is really necessary because they have a type of fruit fly that will sting the fruit even when still completely hard and green: the Queensland fruit fly. Thanks the powers that be we don't have that one anywhere in USA (yet).

[fruitlovers]

I wouldn't have thought those little fruit flies would produce maggots that big. They were the size of maggots of full sized flies. They were easily as long as the width of the fingernail on my index finger. Pretty revolting! Would wrapping them in screen material work?

I think you are probably confusing fungus gnats with fruit flies. Real fruit flies are almost the same size as house flies. Fungus gnats, those pesky little guys that follow fruit indoors, are very tiny. But they don't sting fruits with maggots.

[MarinFla]

I wouldn't have thought those little fruit flies would produce maggots that big. They were the size of maggots of full sized flies. They were easily as long as the width of the fingernail on my index finger. Pretty revolting! Would wrapping them in screen material work?

I think you are probably confusing fungus gnats with fruit flies. Real fruit flies are almost the same size as house flies. Fungus gnats, those pesky little guys that follow fruit indoors, are very tiny. But they don't sting fruits with maggots.

Oscar you are right, thanks for pointing that out. I thought those pesky little flies were fruit flies. My neighbor never got to pic edible fruit because those little gnats would invade them and they would hang half eaten and rotting on the tree so I thought those were fruit flies. Now I am not sure I know what real fruit flies look like. I'll have to go search it. What about those wasps with the long tails? I see them landing on the fruit when they are very little.

[Patrick]

We have a wasp like fruit fly that attacks papaya.  They begin injecting their eggs when the fruit are still very small and hard! 

[HMHausman]

I am not confident about the ID of the maggots, but once the adult whatever they are....fruit flies, papaya wasp or whatever, find your fruiting trees, you will have maggots unless you bag when the fruit is small.  Sorry, Oscar.....these fruits are inoculated with eggs much earlier on than just before ripe.  You can usually see the sap dripping slightly from the injection points. This can happen when the fruit is very small.  You can usually grow a crop or two of papaya without infestation.....as Katie has experienced.  However, if your neighbors already have established trees, the window of opportunity is much smaller. I have bagged the fruits I have grown.  But the fruits are just not good enough to warrant all the extra work in bagging. And, unless I start having a protein shortage, I am not wasting my time with this fruit.  The fruits you can buy in the store from Dominican Republic are far superior to what we can grow anyway.....IMHO, of course.  Love the trees....don't get me wrong.  The male blooms attract hummingbirds.  Nothing looks more tropically aesthetically pleasing than a papaya tree in full fruit.

[Mr. Clean]

I wouldn't have thought those little fruit flies would produce maggots that big. They were the size of maggots of full sized flies. They were easily as long as the width of the fingernail on my index finger. Pretty revolting! Would wrapping them in screen material work?

I am sorry.  I had the same problem, I decided to cut down my papaya trees, instead of all of my fruit.  They were stinging fruit as smal las 2" in diameter.  You can see the sting marks, has a drop of sap that flows down the side of the papaya.   Search for Papaya fruit fly to see the pictures I posted.  Someone on the forum was using newspaper to wrap papaya, but you need to keep re-wraping them as they get bigger.  I suspect the papay fruit fly (looks like a half inch long wasp) could sting through holes in the screen.  Part of the reason I cut them down is that I heard the papaya fruit fly would also begin attacking other fruits with thin skins if the papaya fruit fly is around enough.  So I got rid of my papayas.

[Mr. Clean]

Are some cultivars more resilient than others? My Red Lady never had that problem. I have a couple Red Maradols now, but they are just now mature enough to start flowering.

Do you have any neighbors with Papaya trees?  If your neighbors have papaya trees, I think is expedites how quickly you will be visited by papaya fruit fly. 

[Tropicdude]

Wow I feel for you guys, having such a tough time with fruit flies.   fruit fly larva are not that big, so i am suspecting some other pest, there are more than one for sure.

I have seen they use traps here, for fruit flies specially in mango plantations.  but as mentioned if your neighbor has an infestation.  you will always be in a constant battle . 

Glad to hear the DR fruit are being sold in Fla.  the most popular commercial variety is Red Lady. so I suspect that is what is making its way to the US.  they are really good.

[fruitlovers]

I am not confident about the ID of the maggots, but once the adult whatever they are....fruit flies, papaya wasp or whatever, find your fruiting trees, you will have maggots unless you bag when the fruit is small.  Sorry, Oscar.....these fruits are inoculated with eggs much earlier on than just before ripe.  You can usually see the sap dripping slightly from the injection points. This can happen when the fruit is very small.  You can usually grow a crop or two of papaya without infestation.....as Katie has experienced.  However, if your neighbors already have established trees, the window of opportunity is much smaller. I have bagged the fruits I have grown.  But the fruits are just not good enough to warrant all the extra work in bagging. And, unless I start having a protein shortage, I am not wasting my time with this fruit.  The fruits you can buy in the store from Dominican Republic are far superior to what we can grow anyway.....IMHO, of course.  Love the trees....don't get me wrong.  The male blooms attract hummingbirds.  Nothing looks more tropically aesthetically pleasing than a papaya tree in full fruit.

You obviously have some pest there in Florida that doesn't exist here yet. We don't have any wasps that sting papayas or frult flies that sting papayas green. Next time you make it over here you can see the hundreds of acres of unbagged papayas in Puna. All these are exported to continental USA and Japan so have to meet very rigorous standards for being fruit fly free.

[Carbo]

This is the guy I'm familiar with and who I watched getting intimate with my developing papayas. . .

[fruitlovers]

This is the guy I'm familiar with and who I watched getting intimate with my developing papayas. . .

That is the Papaya Fruit fly. Some of you may be confusing that with a wasp? We don't have this critter here. Thank goodness! Look at the size of the stinger on that thing!!
The main pest here on papaya is oriental fruit fly. Obviously you don't have that one in Florida or all your abius would also be getting stung if unbagged:

We have other fruit flies that sting papayas, but all sting at ripe stage, not at green stage.

[Cookie Monster]

I've found that the papaya fruit fly is only a problem during the hot half of the year. Once the winter comes through, the populations die back quite a bit, and you can harvest clean fruit until the onset of summer again.

[MarinFla]

This is the guy I'm familiar with and who I watched getting intimate with my developing papayas. . .

I have seen that little bastard landing on all my papayas, I though it was a wasp! I guess I might as well chop them down because that bug above is stinging all of them and like Harry said....I can go buy one when I want one and use the space for something better.
           

[fruitlovers]

This is the guy I'm familiar with and who I watched getting intimate with my developing papayas. . .

I have seen that little bastard landing on all my papayas, I though it was a wasp! I guess I might as well chop them down because that bug above is stinging all of them and like harry said....I can go buy one when I want one and use the space for something better.
           

Lucky for you they don't sting green mangos (yet). Are the papayas you buy in Florida from Hawaii?

[MarinFla]

Would he die if I sprayed him in the face with Raid or some other insect killer??