To fight berry-busting fruit flies, researchers focus on sterilizing the bugs

Paul Nelson is used to doing battle with an invasive fruit fly called the spotted wing drosophila, a pest that one year ruined more than half the berries on the Minnesota farm he and his team run. The researchers, using a concept called “gene drive,” manipulated the insects’ DNA so that the female offspring would be sterile, and the method they used to achieve it significantly reduced the chance that a population could rebound. But he said his team’s method, which hinges on an idea called “gene drive,” more quickly facilitates the spread of sterility throughout successive generations, and that could mean fewer times the modified bugs need to be released. “The system is working really efficiently.” If the researchers’ genetic process works in the field, it could be an important addition to farmers’ arsenal of pest management techniques against a persistent bug that can wipe out 20-30% of a raspberry yield even after pesticide use, said Bill Hutchison, a professor and extension entomologist with the University of Minnesota. Matzkin, who was not part of the study, said Scott’s team’s focus on stopping the pest by sterilizing females solved a problem that sometimes occurs with gene drive technology — that a lucky gene mutation can arise and get passed down, resisting what scientists were hoping to achieve.