Pesticide
A farmer sprays pesticide in a rice paddy field near Subang, Indonesia's West Java province, May 27, 2014. Asia's governments are scrambling to head off the potential impact of a weather phenomenon that in the past has driven food prices to levels that sparked social unrest. They are aiming to reduce the impact of the so-called El Nino, a weather pattern that can bring drought to Australia, Southeast Asia and India. Reuters

Mediterranean fruit fly, commonly known as Medfly, is one of the most destructive horticultural pests in Australia. It is estimated that nearly $200 million worth of crops are destroyed each year in West Australia because of Medfly.

The fruit growers were using the chemical called fenthion to control fruit flies on the field. However, pesticide regulators passed a law to ban the use of insecticide in October 2014, in which fruit growers were given 12 months time to phase out the use of the insecticides.

Since then, researchers at the Department of Agriculture and Food Western Australia (DAFWA) have been looking for an alternative to get rid of the destructive fruit flies.

Now, the team at DAFWA has partnered with Oxitec, a UK-based technology company, to test a new method to control Medfly. The new technique makes use of genetically modified organisms (GMO).

Neil Morrison, the research group leader from Oxitec, explains to The ABC that the technique seems to work in controlling the population of the Medfly, similar to what is achieved through Medfly sterilisation. The latter is another way to control fruit fly pests.

In the new technique, a “self-limiting” gene is inserted into male fruit flies. This prevents the female fruit flies from reaching adulthood. The reduction in the number of females affects the population of the next generation.

Oxitec has already used the same technique to reduce the population of dengue fever mosquitoes, Aedes aegypti, in the Carribean, Brazil and Panama. More than 90 percent of the population were suppressed during the trial.

DAFWA has already imported GMO fruit fly strain from the UK and is set to perform a trial in 2016. As of now, the researchers are building a colony of 5,000 flies for testing. The next step in assessing the effectiveness of the technique would be to see if the two groups of flies are compatible with each other.

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