An Italian discovery to fight the Mediterranean fly and avoid pesticides

A new advance in Italian research and discovery that promises to control populations of the Mediterranean fly, one of the most aggressive pests for fruit trees.

 

 

 

The discovery is due to the group coordinated by the geneticist Giuseppe Saccone, Federico II University of Naples. The researchers were able to identify the gene that decides the male sex in the Mediterranean fly, Ceratitis capitata. It can get sterile males, unable to fertilize females and therefore without any danger to the fruits.

 

 

 

The discovered gene also has the ability to reverse the sex of insects. Scientists have unveiled 2 experiments: thanks to the technique of copy-pasting DNA, Crispr, the gene has been silenced in male fly embryos and this has caused their transformation into females; in the 2nd experiment, a DNA fragment containing the gene was injected into the female embryos, transforming them into males.

 

 

 

This sterile male technique would be an alternative to pesticides. Flies could be raised, males separated and sterilized and then introduced into the crops for local reduction of the breeding potential of the species.

 

 

 

According to researchers, this Mediterranean fly control technique could be extended to other harmful species, such as the olive fly and the oriental fly.

 

 

source : ansa it, science.sciencemag.org