IAEA Conducts Successful Test of Drones in Fight Against Disease-Transmitting Mosquitos

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and its partners have successfully tested releasing sterile mosquitos from drones as part of efforts to use a nuclear technique to supress the insect that spreads Zika and other diseases. The IAEA, in partnership with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), has worked with the Swiss-American non-profit group WeRobotics for the last year to develop a drone-based mosquito release mechanism for use in the application of the Sterile Insect Technique (SIT) to control insect pests. Testing of the system was carried out in Brazil last month. SIT, a form of insect birth control, uses radiation to sterilize male mosquitos, which are then released to mate with wild females. As these do not produce any offspring, the insect population declines over time. "The release mechanism for mosquitos has until now been a bottleneck in the application of SIT to control human diseases," said Jeremy Bouyer, medical entomologist at the Joint FAO/IAEA Division of Nuclear Techniques in Food and Agriculture. "The use of drones is a breakthrough, and paves the way for large-scale and cost-efficient releases, also over densely populated areas." SIT has been used for over 50 years to fight agricultural pests such as the Mediterranean fruit fly, and has only recently been adapted for disease-transmitting mosquitos. The insect control method can be particularly useful against vectors that are difficult to manage using conventional techniques, such as nets impregnated with insecticide, or when there is a need to reduce the use of pesticides. The push for the development of SIT to control mosquitos became more urgent as the Zika epidemic unfolded in Brazil and Latin America in 2015-2016. Through its Technical Cooperation Programme, the IAEA provided assistance to affected countries to rapidly diagnose the disease and to boost regional capacity to apply SIT against the vector of diseases.