Crop injury: Releasing sterile male fruit flies in fields cuts crop injury as much as 90%

Sterile male flies launched in fields mate with females that then lay far fewer eggs, drastically lowering the injury the larvae of noticed wing drosophila do to fruit crops

By Gary Hartley

Releasing sterilised males of an invasive fruit fly may make a huge impact in curbing its inhabitants, which poses a extreme menace to international fruit industries.

In the primary trial of its sort, researchers launched male noticed wing drosophila (Drosophila suzukii) sterilised with X-rays into tunnel-shaped greenhouses on three business strawberry fields in Kent, UK. On two of the websites, management greenhouses didn’t have the sterilised flies let into them. All three websites had seen comparable ranges of D. suzukii infestation within the …