Cherry time, stolen by a voracious fly

"A blackbird, oxidized with green and purple, pecked at the cherries, drank the juice, tore at the pink flesh..." , recounts Colette in Sido (1930). The sparrow's feast, in the background, illustrates the immoderate appetite of a flock of birds for the small, red, fleshy fruit, with its sweet, smooth taste - this delicious symbol of the month of June.

It is this voracity of birds for the cherry drupe that inspired the learned name of the fruit tree, Prunus avium, "bird cherry" (cherry tree). This same tree, cultivated for its fruit since the ^4th century BC in Asia Minor, is at the origin of the approximately 600 varieties of sweet cherries today.

By gorging on cherries, birds have largely contributed to the dispersal of their seeds, and thus to the natural expansion of the tree. However, they force arborists to protect their crops using sound scarers, or even the services of a falconer or, sometimes, nets. "Another enemy has emerged, however, smaller but far more formidable," says José Quero-Garcia, a research engineer at INRAE ​​Bordeaux-Aquitaine. In this case, a ferocious midge from Asia, Drosophila suzukii .

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