The USDA APHIS PPQ Mexican Fruit Fly eradication program conducts weekly aerial releases of approximately 115 million sterile Mexflies from Moore Airbase (MAB) in Edinburg, TX, and approximately 66 million from the Emergence and Release Facility (ERF) in Harlingen, TX. To maintain a high quality of the year-round releasing program, we monitor the integrity of the released fruit flies by conducting the quality control test of the aerial release machines in regard to the flight ability of the flies. The quality control sampling of Mexflies collected from Harlingen showed a damage of less than 1 % caused to the adult Mexflies. The low damage levels observed in the static release (2.3%) and the aerial release demonstrated (1.4%) damage from the chill room. The samples collected from Moore Airbase-Edinburg demonstrated 1.8% damage from the aerial release collections, 1.0% damage from static release samples, and 0.2% damage from the ERF chill room samples. These low levels of damage to flies suggest that the aerial release machines are both in good working order. Samples were collected to determine the number of flies per gram, the results showed higher values from MAB Edinburg ERF (Willacy strain), (104.2 ± 2.39) compared to the Harlingen ERF (BPS-10 strain) (77.2 ± 1.92), these suggest that the BPS-19 strain of Mexflies increased fitness due to their larger size. The mean absolute fliers from the Edinburg Aerial Release, Knockdown, and Static Release samples were less than 50% from all collections.
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