Next gen insect control

Dubbed “self-limiting” insects by their makers, a UK-based biotechnology company called Oxitec, these insects are genetically modified (GM) with an inserted gene that permits only male offspring to survive. Once released into a pest community, the GM insects gradually lower the population, accomplishing a new type of pest control. Then, rather politely, they die off themselves. “After we stop releasing the self-limiting males, the gene declines in a population over a short period of time and within a few generations, disappears,” Neil Morrison, head of agriculture programs for Oxitec, told DTN. “It’s a gene that prevents survival of half its carriers — the females — so it’s essentially programmed to decline and disappear quite rapidly.” Sound too sci-fi to be real? It’s actually happening right now, in the Florida Keys. After gaining EPA and state regulatory approval for the project last year, Oxitec is working with the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District to deploy the country’s first largescale release of Oxitec’s self-limiting Aedes aegypti mosquitoes.

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