Improving rearing, handling, and field components for fruit fly SIT application

Fruit flies are one of the most destructive pests affecting production and international trade of fruits and vegetables worldwide. As such, fruit fly pests are a significant constraint on reaching the sustainable development goals of the UN by affecting food security and safety as well as poverty reduction and the environment. In the past decades the sterile insect technique (SIT) has been successfully incorporated to area-wide integrated pest management against some of the most important fruit fly pests in a number of Member States. Nevertheless, application of SIT could be further improved and optimized by incorporating recent technological innovations and by harmonizing technologies and tools through applied research. To achieve this objective the following research topics should be addressed: improved breeding colonies by maintaining genetic diversity, application of more efficient diets for mass-rearing, better nutrition of sterile flies to enhance male mating performance, decision support tools to optimize sterile fly release, improved monitoring and detection through more effective trapping systems, optimization of trapping networks through decision support tools and increased efficiency in population suppression using novel bait station technology. This research is expected to further advance the application of the SIT against fruit fly pests of economic and quarantine importance, as well as related technologies including surveillance and other fruit fly population suppression methods. Those improvements will be made available to the Member States through technology transfer.

The main objective of this CRP is to optimize and harmonize through applied research the use of SIT and related technologies for management of plant pests.