Sterile Insect Technique

The sterile insect technique (SIT) is a form of birth control imposed on a population of an insect pest to reduce its numbers. Thus far, this has involved rearing large numbers of the target insect pest species, exposing them to gamma rays to induce sexual sterility and releasing them into the target population of the pest on an ecosystem-wide or area-wide basis. The concept of releasing insects of pest species to introduce sterility into wild populations, and thus to control them, was independently conceived by three scientists on three different continents. The first scientist to propose genetic control of insect species was A.S. Serebrovskii, a geneticist in the Institute of Zoology, Moscow State University, who proposed the use of chromosomal translocations for population suppression. The second was Dr. F.L Vanderplank at a British Overseas Service tsetse research field station in rural Tanganyika (now Tanzania). He showed that the sterility of interspecific hybrids of two tsetse...