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Genetic modification strategies to control pests are being developed as an alternative to the use of chemical pesticides, and a paper published in the journal BMC Biology has reported the modification of moths to select for male offspring in order to suppress total population size.
Dr Joe Perry, former Chair of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) GMO Panel, said:
“The European Food Safety Authority has already developed environmental risk assessment procedures for genetically-modified insects, which will be applied when a commercial application is made to release insects in Europe.
“There are relatively few risks foreseen with these mass-sterile techniques, which have been employed for decades using non-GM insects. However, it is important to realise that the mass release of insects is likely to affect the plants on which they feed, not all of which will be crop plants. This might conceivably favour the spread of some cruciferous weeds, hence the need for proper environmental risk assessment.”
Prof. Huw Jones, Head of Cereal Transformation Lab at Rothamsted Research, said:
“Assuming environmental risk assessments were positive, I could see this becoming part of a future sustainable, integrated management strategy for agricultural regions where crops are regularly decimated by pest insects.”
Prof. Johnjoe McFadden, Professor of Molecular Genetics at the University of Surrey, said:
“The Oxitec group’s research provides an exciting new technology that could be used to control insect pests of plants, humans and animals. The researchers engineered GM male moths that mate just as well as the non-GM insects but only produce male offspring. Release of the GM moths resulted in a crash of the moth population in greenhouse trials. If the results can be replicated in the field then it would represent a big step forward in eco-friendly ways of controlling insect disease and improving food production.
‘Pest control and resistance management through release of insects carrying a male-selecting transgene’ by Tim Harvey-Samuel et al. published in BMC Biology on Thursday 16 July 2015.
All our previous output on similar subjects can be seen at this weblink: http://www.sciencemediacentre.org/tag/gm-animals/
Declared interests
None declared