Macquarie University has recently been awarded $4.7 million funding from Horticulture Innovation Australia to identify the genetic code that enables elimination of females in overseas fruit flies. The goal is to reproduce these characteristics in Australia’s Queensland fruit fly.

Fruit flies, such as the Queensland fruit fly, are the most significant insect threat to Australia’s $12.9 billion horticultural industries, and increasingly threaten Australia’s major southern growing regions in South Australia, Victoria, New South Wales, Tasmania and Western Australia.

Over the past five years, significant investment has been made in development of the Sterile Insect Technique (SIT) through the Horticulture Innovation Limited ‘SITplus’ partnership. Millions of flies are produced in a factory, sterilised, and released in the field to prevent reproduction of pest populations and to eliminate outbreaks.

Partners at United States Department of Agriculture (Hawaii), Giessen University (Germany), and Insect Pest Control Section of the Joint FAO/IAEA Division of Nuclear Techniques in Food and Agriculture will lead efforts to identify genes in overseas species, while partners at CSIRO and South Australia Research Development Institute will lead efforts to reproduce these traits in Queensland fruit fly.

Source: miragenews.com