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Markets Public Health |
Pink Bollworm Pink bollworm (Pectinophora gossypiella) is one of the most destructive pests of cotton in many areas of the world, including the western USA. An area-wide sterile insect release program has kept the San Joaquin Valley in California free of PBW for almost 40 years and has been extended to eradicate the pest in rest of the South-western United States. Oxitec is collaborating with the USDA program in Arizona to develop more effective sterile pink bollworm strains for this program. Oxitec has developed a strain of PBW with a fluorescent protein that is easily visible under a coloured filter, and is otherwise identical to the current factory-reared strain. This will overcome problems of incorrect identification of wild and released insects caught in the field, generally improving the efficiency of the control program and preventing expensive, unnecessary treatments. The mass rearing and field performance of this strain has been extensively tested by the USDA in 2006 and 2007 in open field trials. In 2007, 1.2 million marked moths were released with the same number of standard moths from the Arizona mass-rearing facility over three cotton fields totalling 100 acres. Moths were released by hand, aircraft and a ground release machines over about ten weeks. The marker performance was excellent and very stable under field conditions, providing significant benefits to program managers and trap checkers. In other parameters such as mating success, dispersal and longevity the moths were equivalent to the standards, showing no trade-off in performance with the addition of the marker. This trial will be repeated on a larger area and for a full season in 2008.
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