| Updated:
Male mutant flies could save the world’s crops through mating
It might sound like science-fiction, but it's a real technique undergoing development. Male flies are being genetically modified by biotechnology company Oxitec to kill off their own population through mating.
The Mediterranean fruit fly is currently an agricultural pest worldwide, infesting over 200 different types of crop.
But by inserting a gene into the males that is lethal to female development, researchers say that, eventually, after a number of generations of mating, the gene could have proliferated to such an extent that there would be no females left.
Oxitec describes the process as “pre-pupal female lethality”, because it kills females before they become adults. Since the males will have no females to mate with, the fly population would be completely wiped out.
So far it has been successfully tested in a greenhouse environment, the details of which are published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
If this was replicated in a real-life setting, the scientists argue that it could prove an effective means of pest control, preventing damage to crops in a way that is both cheap and kind to the environment. It could also work more effectively than some current forms of pest control, such as sterilisation and insecticides.
"In a local area where you perform this process, the population levels quickly shrink, massively reducing the amount of crop damage," Philip Leftwich, lead author of the study, told the BBC.
He added that the next step would be trialling the technique in an open field, but that this would require government approval.
The technique has already attracted some critics, however, such as Helen Wallace from Genewatch, an organisation that monitors the use of genetic technology. She told the BBC that the long-term effects of releasing millions of GM flies would be impossible to predict, adding that she was concerned by the possible consequences of dead fly larvae being left inside crops.
"Fruit grown using Oxitec's GM flies will be contaminated with GM maggots which are genetically programmed to die inside the fruit they are supposed to be protecting,” she said.
"Contaminated fruit won't be welcome on the market and could be bad for health. Male GM flies will survive for multiple generations and could be spread worldwide when fruit is transported."