Phylloxera tests negative on Lanzarote

Canarian Government’s Agricultural Department has tested vines for phylloxera at 71 points of Lanzarote, with negative results so far.

The testing was started on Tenerife, Gran Canaria and Lanzarote after phylloxera was discovered in vineyards in northern Tenerife earlier this year. Over 6,500 tests have been carried out on the three largest islands and phylloxera has been detected in 86 sites, all located on Tenerife. 

Phylloxera is an aphid-like insect that destroyed most of the vineyards in Europe after being imported from America in the late 19^th century. The plague was tackled by grafting rootstock from resistant American species onto European vines, but this was never necessary on the Canaries and other, usually similarly isolated, sites, where vines are still grown from original rootstock.