Year after year after year. We would cut open our mangos grown on the farm in trepidation and fear. The problem being the fruit would be beautiful on the outside and filled with twisting crawling maggots on the inside. Shocking to say the least and hear breaking for us.

It was a disaster and it broke our hearts to have nurtured hundreds of fruits to be thrown into the pit to be made into compost. We were fearful of giving the fruit to anyone lest they had maggots in them.

Then I joined a Goa gardening group and learnt that the fruit fly was the cause of the maggots. When the fruit was peanut size, they laid their eggs in the fruit which turned into maggots when the fruit ripened. I found that one has to help the crop by hanging fruit fly traps which mimic the pheromones of the female fruit fly and attracts the male to it. Water in the base of the trap kills it as it drowns in it. I dislike pesticides and refuse to use chemicals on the fruit so this was a brilliant choice to cover my orchard.

I got onto Amazon and found the lures being sold by an agro based firm in Maharastra. It took a week for the order to arrive and with much excitement we drove to the farm early morning to load the traps.

We had only 10 traps and I thought we needed ONE trap PER tree. That was NOT so!! We need ONE trap for the whole orchard! So I had bought an army to cover the crop!! That's fine I feel, let them do their job!

Instead I can bring one trap home and fix it to our Malgoba which also gets attacked by the fruit fly. The mangoes are larger so hopefully we can save them

I know as kids the mangoes always suffered with maggots in them. So glad to know that there is something organic that we can do rather than just spray them with pesticide.

I know in far away Denmark a Danish cousin has a plum tree in her garden which was inedible because of the fruit fly. She never knew that and the trees delicious fruit could not be eaten by the family. My cousin showed me the fruit which was attacked by some insect. I have told her to try this trap. She might have success after all these years of losing her fruit.

Today Amazon is a great platform from where I can purchase anything I need at reasonable prices. Lets see how these traps work this year!