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Poster Display
Plant-Insect Ecosystems
Keun Chae
Biological Scientist
Texas A&M University
College Station, Texas
Amber R. Arellano
Biological Science Laboratory Technician
USDA-APHIS
Edinburg, Texas
Kari Pina
Biological Science Laboratory Technician
USDA-APHIS
Edinburg, Texas
Jason Carlson
Entomologist
USDA-APHIS
Edinburg, Texas
frank Dirrigl
Professor
University of Texas
Edinburg, Texas
Daniel Flores
Supervisory Entomologist
USDA-APHIS
Edinburg, Texas
Pedro Rendon
USDA-APHIS
Guatemala City, Retalhuleu, Guatemala
Anastrepha ludens (Mexican fruit fly, Mexfly) is a highly invasive tephritid pest, causing significant economic losses to important fruit species such as citrus and mangoes due to the oviposition activity of the female flies. In the Lower Rio Grande Valley area of Texas, millions of sterile flies are released daily as part of the year-round sterile insect technique (SIT) program aimed at eradicating wild Mexflies migrating from Southern America. However, one drawback of the current system is that it is a bisexual program, meaning half of the released sterile flies are females. Sterile females can still search for potential oviposition sites and cause physical damages to fruits. Additionally, mass-releases of sterile females can reduce the efficiency of SIT by limiting the access of sterile males to wild-type females. To address this issue, a Mexfly genetic sexing strain, BPS-10, was developed for sex separation, enabling a male-specific release strategy. BPS-10 includes a genetic translocation of the black pupae (bp) gene into the Y-chromosome in the bp-null background. As results, males exhibit the dominant bp phenotype with brown-colored pupae, while female pupae remain black. These pupae can be efficiently separated by an electronic optical sorting machine during the mass-rearing process. In the current study, we discuss critical rearing parameters for BPS-10 and provide key performance indicators for the BPS-based, male-specific SIT program.