Vegetable leafminer (VLM), potato leafminer and American serpentine leafminer are exotic flies that cause significant damage to horticultural commodities overseas, and potentially threaten Australia’s vegetable, nursery, melon and potato industries.

VLM population levels seem to be held in check largely by tiny biological control agents called parasitoid wasps.

In 2017, a Hort Innovation-funded project was established to recognise the damaging impact that VLM could have on some of Australia’s fresh produce industries if it were to move into production regions.

In this article, AUSVEG Biosecurity Officer Madeleine Quirk explores the role of parasitoid wasps in controlling vegetable leafminer populations in far-north Queensland, the importance of parasitoid wasps overseas, and research conducted into reservoirs of parasitoid wasps within Australia’s non-pest leafminers.

The Research, Development and Extension program for control, eradication and preparednesss of vegetable leafminer (MT16004) has been funded by Hort Innovation.