The ripeness stage but not the cultivar influences the attraction of Anastrepha obliqua to guava

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The West Indian fruit fy, Anastrepha obliqua (Macquart), infests a wide diversity of tropical fruit. Previous studies suggest that A. obliqua adults are attracted to volatile compounds common in diferent hosts. However, to date, most studies have used ripe fruit for the identifcation of attractive compounds. In this study, we investigated the attraction of sexually mature A. obliqua females and males to two cultivars and three ripening stages of guava. We also identifed the attractive compounds to A. obliqua by combined gas chromatography-electroantennographic detector (GC-EAD) and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC–MS) and evaluated the biological activity of the identifed compounds in feld-cage tests. We found that individuals of both sexes of A. obliqua showed no preference to the volatiles of either of the two cultivars of guava evaluated. In contrast, fies were more attracted to ripe and half-ripe fruit than to unripe ones. GC-EAD analyses of extracts of ripe “Creole” or “Thai” cultivars identifed six compounds that elicited antennal responses by A. obliqua females and males. The compounds were identifed by GC–MS as ethyl butyrate, cis-3-hexen-1-ol, ethyl hexanoate, cis-3-hexenyl acetate, ethyl benzoate, and ethyl octanoate. Half-ripe guava emit ethyl butyrate, cis-3-hexen-1-ol, ethyl hexanoate, and cis-3-hexenyl acetate, while only traces of cis-3-hexenyl-acetate were found in unripe guava. Field-cage tests with synthetic standards confrmed that the compounds identifed are responsible for the attraction of A. obliqua fies to ripe guava. eng