Precision-Guided Sterile SWD Technology Moving Through Trails
- lyoodles
- 7 hours ago
- 1 min read
Nicole Heslip April 14, 2025
Farmers could soon start testing the effectiveness of gene-edited technology to control Spotted Winged Drosophila with sterile males.
Chief Commercial Officer of Agragene Matt Helms tells Brownfield, “We don’t have pipelines coming from big ag with new active ingredients and chemicals, and this is a technology that will not develop resistance and we’re not introducing any new genetic material so we call this a brand-new category of insect control.”
Research and Development Director Stephanie Gamez tells Brownfield she’s been developing the CRISPR-Cas9 technology in insects since graduate school.
“The female, after she mates with the sterile male, thinks that she’s mated and tries to lay eggs,” she explains. “But the few eggs that she lays, they don’t hatch, they don’t hatch into anything and so there’s no infestation, there’s no offspring.”
Helms says Agragene’s KNOCKOUT completed field trials with USDA and university researchers last season and will start trials with fresh berry and cherry growers this year in partnership with Associates Insectary if approved for an experimental use permit from the EPA.
He says the precision-guided sterile insect technology could be commercially available by 2027.
To find more information go to Brownfield