Research
Several true fruit flies (Diptera: Tephritidae) are destructive pests for economic fruits such as mango, guava, banana. Some of fruit flies become invasive species worldwide and mainly cause a restriction of international trades. These insects can damage fruit hosts at different stages, larval and adult stages. Female fruit flies can lay eggs into fruit hosts using ovipositor. This action makes small puncture wounds on fruit skin, causing microorganism infection and simply abandons by farmers. Larvae live and use fruits as a nutrient resource for their growth and development. Usually, farmers use traditional approaches such as spraying insecticides to prevent and control fruit fly pests. However, such chemicals can harm non-target organisms, including human, animals and plants, as well as contaminate in the environment. Therefore, the local and international premium markets require only fruit products from organic farming.
Sterile Insect Technique (SIT) is species-specific and environmentally friendly-based birth control. It is a part of effective integrated pest management. Insects are massively reared and only males are irradiated before mass-releases to the target areas. The sterile released males will competitively mate with wild target species causing a decreasing population size of new generations. SIT is usually integrated in area-wide pest control programs. Nowadays, this approach is widely accepted for overcoming several agricultural, medical, and veterinary insect pests.
Our research group aims to uncover and apply several basic knowledge using skills and tools related to Genetics, Biology, Bioinformatics, etc. for supporting effective and sustainable SIT programs. The research’s topics are mainly clustered into the following topics.