## 1 Introduction  
In line with the European Green Deal 2050, the EU biodiversity strategy for 2030 highlights the necessity of recovering damaged ecosystems through lowering the usage and toxicity of pesticides [1; 2]. Even though per-hectare pesticide use in Europe has been consistent since 1990, worldwide pesticide consumption roughly doubled between 1990 and 2010, then stabilized over 2010 to 2019 at a level of about six million tons of pesticides used per year [3]. These levels of pesticide consumption (e.g., mainly cover-sprayed or as toxic baits) reinforce the use of attractants in integrated pest management (IPM) for fruit fly control (e.g., attracticide technique, mass-trapping, or sterile insect technique (SIT)) [4; 5]. However, other ecological strategies such as biological methods were also implemented (e.g., the use of parasitoids, predators, biological insecticides, or bacterial symbionts) [6; 7; 8; 9; 10]. As a result, the use of lures in fruit flies has become one of the primary ecological strategies for pest control [11; 12]. _Cenatitis capitata_ (Wiedemann) (Diptera: Tebriffidae) continues to have a major economic impact, since its larvae have more than 300 species of fruits and vegetables as hosts worldwide [13; 14]. Despite the great efforts that have been made controlling this fly with attractants, today the complete natural components and the way of action of most natural pheromones are still not well known [4; 11]. The composition of the _C. capitata_ pheromone has been described as a blend of different compounds, a lot of them minor or unknown and perhaps essential in the power of attraction [15; 16]. Ecological control and monitoring of _C. capitata_ have traditionally been performed by using baits, including a pheromone-related compound and/or food attractants combined with an insecticide (i.e., chemical or biological origin) in different trap types [17; 18; 19; 20; 21; 22; 23]. Female selective catching has been based mainly on food-related compounds [24; 25; 26; 27]. Traps baited with trimedure, a male attractant related to an antenna odorant-binding protein, has been used in the Mediterranean area during more than 40 years; hence, it was considered the best and most practical attractant for _C. capitata_[28; 29]. A great effort has been made to increase the efficiency and longevity of this synthetic parapheromone (i.e., trimedure) in the field [30; 31; 32]. Despite this, although effective in most cases, it has not always been enough to control the pest, or the costs were too high for it to be applied [5; 33]. In the search for alternatives, it has been observed that exposure to volatiles from essential oils (EOs) boost medfly attractiveness or mating success when employed as semio-chemicals, e.g., in SIT programs [34; 35]. For example, ginger root oil, \(\alpha\)-copaene-containing oils, and orange and other citrus oils enhance male performance in _C. capitata_[36; 37; 38; 39]. In fact, the oily liquid hydrocarbon \(\alpha\)-copaene has been demonstrated to have an attractive power between 2 and 5 times higher than trimedure on medfly [40]. The roots and seed-extracted EO from _Angelica archangelica_ L. was the first evidence of the attractant efficacy of \(\alpha\)-copaene on _C. capitata_[41]. More than 800 pounds of this oil were used in approximately 50,000 traps to control the effectiveness of the fly eradication process in Florida in 1956 [42]. Both tricyclic sesquiterpenes, \(\alpha\)-copaene and \(\alpha\)-ylangene, which were isolated from this oil after fractionation, were recognized as their active compounds [41; 43]. Despite these findings, \(\alpha\)-copaene's commercial scalability is still unestablished today. The main reasons are because (1) although the presence of \(\alpha\)-copaene has been described as a component in many plants' EOs [44], its relative content is usually very low [45]; and (2) the length of the currently used synthesis pathway increases its complexity and costs.