author(s)
Adnan Abdel-Fattah El-Sayed Darwish

abstract
The Mediterranean fruit fly, Ceratitis capitata (Wiedemann) and the peach fruit fly, Bactrocera zonata (Saunders) are two of the serious pests of different fruits and vegetables in the world inflicting economic damages. Four species of fruits were selected to study their suitability as hosts to C. capitata and B. zonata. These fruits were peach Pruns persica L., apricot P. armeniaca plum, P. salicina Lindl and apple Malus domestica Borkh. Suitability was determined by three experiments, the first experiment was studied the population of density by pheromone traps in the four orchards. The second experiment was evaluating field infestation rates of different host-fruit by incubation samples of infested fruits. The third experiment was studied the performance of C. capitata and B. zonata that reared in laboratory on these hosts by no-choice and free choice tests. Populations of the two fruit flies were higher in the peach orchard than the other orchards. Therefore in the incubation infested fruits the highest mean number of pupae and adults per fruit were observed in peach fruits, while the lowest was observed on apple fruits. The highest emergence rate per fruit was observed in apricot fruit followed by peach, plum and apple. Susceptibility was determined by counting and comparing the number of puparia recovered from the different fruit after exposure to the flies in boxes. Apricot was found to be the most susceptible, followed by peach, plum and apple.