Yesterday three "slicers and dicers" were chopping their way through fruit collected from the restricted zones where a single male Queensland fruit fly was found in a garden in the Riverside/Parihaka area, in Whangarei, eight days ago.
The fly was found in the front yard of a home last Tuesday.
It was collected from an insect trap the Ministry of Primary Industries had placed there as part of its national fruit fly surveillance programme. The fruit fly is a major threat to New Zealand's $4 billion horticulture export industry.
Since then a team of about 120 had remained on high alert and were vigilantly checking traps, collecting fruit and examining hundreds of pieces of fruit. So far 60kg of fruit had been sliced and looked at under a microscope.
Head of the mobile laboratory MPI entomologist Alan Flynn said that, as each day passed with no further fruit flies being detected, it increased the probability that there was no fruit fly population in the area.