Faux fruit catches apple maggots

AMHERST, Mass. -- The temptation is too great for the apple maggot fly to resist: Luscious-looking red spheres bobbing in an orchard, a whiff of ripe fruit in the air.

But when they land on the orbs, the pests don't have time for a nibble. And they'll never get the chance to lay eggs destined to worm their way into fruit.

Seconds after their first lick of what they thought was an apple, the flies drop dead.

They've been lured to a poisonous plastic decoy being developed by researchers at the University of Massachusetts -- a pesticide-laced ball with a sugar coating designed to kill flies with fewer chemicals than farmers now use to spray their orchards.

A vial of apple-scented liquid hangs near the sphere, helping entice the flies.

"As soon as they sense sugar, they get excited for an all-out feeding frenzy," said Bradley Chandler, an assistant who helped design the faux fruit.

But the pesticide immediately short-circuits the pest's central nervous system, sending them into spasms.

"We call it the breakdance of death," Chandler said. "They never last more than 10 seconds."

The decoys are still in a development phase, and can't be sold commercially. And UMass can't make money off them because of the school's nonprofit status. But Chandler is producing the contraptions on his own time and selling them to researchers around the country for about $4 each.