Biological control of fruit flies: bibliometric analysis on the main biocontrol agents

The Tephritidae family has many fruit fly species responsible for causing direct and indirect damage to economically important fruit trees worldwide. Biological control has been sought as a method for the management of these insects, mainly because it does not cause adverse damage to the environment. Thus, this review sought information on what is currently being published in the scientific field about the main biological agents that are used to control fruit flies. The information was obtained through surveys between the months of June and August 2020, in bases such as the Web of Science, Scopus, ScienceDirect, Taylor & Francis, Springer, and Scielo. The inclusion of the articles followed criteria such as publication language English, Portuguese and Spanish, available in full, from categories A1 to B1, related to the biological agents used in the control of fruit flies and published in the last five years. A total of 2,362 studies were found, of which 105 articles were selected for this review. Regarding the years of publication, only 27% of the studies correspond to references from the years 2019 and 2020, with a greater number of research on parasitoids and developed in the laboratory. The largest concentration of research was in countries like Brazil, Mexico, and Spain.