Vegetable Leafminer

The vegetable leafminer is a tiny ‘agromyzid’ fly with a taste for a wide variety of fruit and vegetable crops. It poses a significant threat to Australia's vegetable, nursery and melon industries. Vegetable leafminer cause severe economic losses abroad, due largely to destructive feeding by the larvae.

Eggs are laid inside leaves and after hatching, the larvae feed on leaf tissue, tunneling through the leaf and leaving behind a conspicuous white trail or 'leaf mine'. This mining not only looks unseemly, and reduces marketability of crops, it also hinders photosynthesis, reducing the growth and development of the plants, and can cause defoliation, a lack of fruiting, and in extreme cases, death of the plant.

This species eDNA probe was developed to assess leaf mines when there is no larvae present to confirm identification. DNA from larvae are left in the leaf mines and can be detected up to 1 month post-eclosion with this probe.