Translated material
Gmukhi
Suppose flies overcome you. No, not those in the apartment. Not those who (thanks to unscrupulous manufacturers) come across in sausage and conservals. And not even those that bite painful when you sit on the shore with a fishing rod. You are a Mediterranean manufacturer of natural, “organic” olives, and you were defeated by fruit flies. More precisely, the oil flies BactRocera Oleae.
There is no life from these times. A female fly, when the turn comes to breed, carefully pierces the young olive with his egg, lays the egg, and so until all the olives are ending. A hungry larva soon appears from the egg, rises its way to the bone, bringing grief and sometimes saying “goodbye” to the crop.
If you are a normal farmer and not mind to indulge in chemistry, then you can use it, pour your trees with poisons in the hope of getting rid of the nasty insect and not let it multiply. If you are a very advanced farmer, then you have the hope that one day, following the example of potatoes harmful to the Colorado beetle, someone will make an olive harmful to the oil fly.
And if you are a glamorous “organic” farmer and you cannot use GMOs and pesticides, then your chances to stay in business strive for zero. After all, this is only for people's health there is no difference, “organic” olive or not. For the health of flies - there is. In organic, not restrained by anything, they are divorced most actively. Olives are not potatoes, but flies are not Colorado beetles. They cannot be collected manually, they fly quickly, and their larvae are hidden inside olives and destroy the profit imperceptibly.
The oil fly is the main pest of olives, and olives are the only food of the oil flush. So they are adapted to each other that one without the other in our world is no longer found. What to do? How to preserve the crop and the green sticker "Organic", which should tell the consumer about the use of grandfathers of production? How to destroy flies without resorting to chemistry? Is it really the only way to get rid of the pest is not to grow olives?
One way to control the number of flies is to use a huge amount of ... flies. They can specially be diluted in the laboratory. Irradiate radiation until the loss of the ability to reproduce. Release into nature. The sterile flies, theoretically, will seduce the “wild”, unsuccessfully try to conceive offspring, ultimately reducing the number of pests. And if you let it out regularly, but at a certain time, then not far from victory over the "buzzers".
Only here is the problem. The flies grown in captivity and subjected to radiation slightly change their behavior. They have a little different time of marriage games. And even if they manage to mate, then the “inability” does not give the proper result. Often only provokes a fertile partner to find another pair. Despite a good idea, success is far from predetermined. Is it a dead end again?! Will the "organic" olives will disappear soon?
Maybe yes. Or maybe not.
I once already wrote about the company Oxitec and their successes in creating genetically modified mosquitoes designed to reduce the incidence of fever of Denge [1]. Males of mosquitoes, released into wild nature, turned out to be capable of competition with "wild" analogues for the female love. True, they are never destined to become real fathers-due to a special genetic defect, their children never live to the stage of an adult insect.
This company also works with flies [2]. True, there is subtlety - infanticide programmed in DNA by sexual basis. GM samks, not distinguished by behavior from non-GM-muh, successfully beat off their females from the latter. They lay eggs. But only boys survive from the younger generation, vuluers never manage to wave the wing. So, continue the clan. Theoretically, adding to the population of “wild” flies the estimated number of modified males, in a short time you can significantly reduce the population or even destroy the species. In practice, this has already been confirmed in laboratory tests.
At the end of August 2013, Oxitec filed an application for already field tests of its invention in Spain, which traditionally suffers from the pest. The second application, similar, only related to Mediterranean fruit flies, went to Brazil. If everything works out, then the “organic” farmers and their buyers must be satisfied -the product will not be considered genetically modified. Ordinary farmers will not lose either, they will only save on pesticides. And even progressive farmers will be happy, after all, flies are not anyhow, but GMOs. For nature, in general, continuous benefit.
Permissions have not yet been obtained, very far and even further before the approval of the technology. But the plans have already caused light bouts of paranoia among fighters with GMO [3]. They write complaints. Two reasons. One ridiculous-fear of random eating olive with the remains of GM links. The second is incomprehensible: the fears that the “strangers” genes will break out and spoil the gene pool. Do not even ask where the gene pool is. Something I do not remember complaints when, with the purpose of biological control, instead of one concrete, specially created flies, tens of thousands of mutated, no-tested real monsters were released into the will. This is where the real genetic infection was. Not all of them were sterile, no one checked each.
Dear Oxitec, if you do not succeed in Spain and Brazil with flies, or there is simply an opportunity - come to my mother in the country! Please. Well, it is very necessary. No, do not take flies. Take the Colorado beetles with you. And wireworms. The same "semi -sterils". And bring mosquitoes too. I will not protest and write complaints.
I will not tell anyone at all.
1. Http://trv-science.ru/2012/07/31/letite-komary-letite/