Insect pests represent an enormous direct burden to livestock production, as well as an indirect burden to general agricultural productivity, particularly in tropical developing countries. But they can also pose a threat to other regions of the world. Suppression or eradication of these pests and preventing their invasion into new areas is essential for the increased agricultural production necessary to feed the growing human populations of affected countries. Amongst these pests, Screwworm flies cause severe losses to livestock and wildlife, while Tsetse flies, which transmit human and animal trypanosomosis, cause both direct and indirect losses to livestock and agricultural production. In this way, Tsetse flies contribute significantly to rural poverty in Africa with annual losses to GDP estimated at US$4.5 billion. Old and New World Screwworms have a wider geographical distribution and there are new risks of advances or introductions of these insect pests into previously un-infested areas.

Nuclear technology can contribute to environmentally-friendly methods for the suppression or eradication of these insect pests and disease vectors, especially through use of the sterile insect technique (SIT) as a component of area-wide integrated pest management (AW-IPM) programmes. The SIT has already proven successful in eradicating populations of these and other insect pests and can generate significant financial benefits for producers.

In response to requests from Member States, the Joint FAO/IAEA Insect Pest Control Sub-programme established this CRP to focus on the development of techniques to analyse genetic relationships and gene flow of populations and to integrate this knowledge with predictive modelling and mapping techniques using Geographical Information Systems (GIS). Rapidly developing GIS software provides a valuable tool that, combined with new technologies for genetic analyses, enables the potential distribution of these pests to be predicted and possible invasion routes to be identified. Together, these will contribute to improved control of these pests or prevention of their invasion of new habitats. The SIT has the ability to suppress insect pest populations, or to prevent, contain or even eradicate the establishment of new outbreaks of invasive pests such as Screwworms. However, the operational use of the SIT in AW-IPM programmes depends upon accurate identification and characterisation of populations of these pests. The CRP was therefore designed to integrate GIS modelling technology with genetic analyses to enable this identification and characterisation to take place so that the required distribution maps for genetically distinct populations of these pests could be made available.

Major beneficiaries of the CRP are operational AW-IPM programmes in countries that apply the SIT against Tsetse flies and Screwworms. The outputs from this CRP have contributed significantly to current distribution and predictive maps and the technologies are already being used for preparing new maps by national experts. The testing and development of Maxent and other ‘Open Source’ freely available software for predictive mapping and mathematical or computer simulation models enable a better understanding of spatial pest distribution.

In conclusion, the CRP outputs will facilitate improved planning and monitoring of SIT-based AW-IPM programmes especially for implementation of regional Tsetse and Screwworm fly control programmes.

Researchers from Australia, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, France, Indonesia, Iraq, Israel, Kenya, the United Kingdom, the United States of America and Yemen participated in this CRP.

For more information, please see the CRP description:

http://www.urlse.cn/projects/crp/d42013