Medfly fruit fly and Cape fruit fly will infest all deciduous fruits, table grapes, citrus fruits, and a great many other fruits of trees or shrubs, wild or domestic, but to differing degrees.  At the one end of the scale, guava, loquat, peach, and wild plum (Harpephyllum caffrum) are examples of fruits that are very readily infested fruit fly, while at the other end of the scale, lemon, avocado and olive are examples of fruit with very low infestation potential.

The list below is not a complete list. There are many, many wild host plants not mentioned here.

It will serve little purpose to list here every single host species documented by these various authors, as many either do not occur in South Africa, are only occasional or rare hosts, and/or are species that the average person using this manual is unlikely to encounter.  The selected list given in this Annexure is therefore intended mainly to illustrate the wide variety of fruits infested by Medfly and Cape fruit fly but including all the more common host fruits as well as some fewer common examples.  Fruit flies have been recorded from many wild species of indigenous and exotic plants from a large number of families.  For the purposes of an SIT program, it would probably be best to consider any unknown fruit or berry as a potential fruit fly host unless proven otherwise.

Fruit does not necessarily have to be large to serve as a fruit fly host fruit.  For example, the author of this manual, Brian Barnes, has collected fruit flies from milkwood berries, which are only about 5 mm in diameter.

The host plants listed below have been taken from the above references and are divided into four categories – major commercial fruit hosts; other fruit trees, ornamentals, and domestic hosts; other trees; and wild hosts.  No attempt is made to indicate the relative degrees of susceptibility to fruit flies of these hosts, as this differs according to species of fruit and fruit fly, the specific locality, and can be subjective.  However, some of the most susceptible include stone fruit, guava, loquat, quince and wild plum, H. caffrum.