Many of us are familiar with the appearance of the citrus peel pierced with ugly black dots. These points are the results of the bite of the female fruit fly. Males brought to Kibbutz Sde Eliyahu will cause the sequence to be interrupted and the birth of new flies to stop.
Fruit flies mate. The life of the female lasts about five weeks, during which she will mate only once
Near the barn of Sde Eliyahu, a religious kibbutz in the Beit Shean Valley, a group of pesky flies finished their last flight from the backs of the cows in the barn and the garbage piles. Across the street, a group of workers finished cleaning a shiny new industrial building recently erected in the kibbutz. A system of gutters has already been installed on the roof of the building to store rainwater that will be used by the factory, the waste separation systems have also already been set up, and in the laboratories inside the building one of the workers tested the quality of the factory's produce.
Near the laboratories, in the production rooms of the new "Bio Play" factory that will be inaugurated today, flying in narrow glass cages made by the factory - masses of fruit flies, which, unlike their brothers the innocent house flies that flew in the nearby barn, on their small wings will be assigned an important task. These flies are designed to fight one of the biggest pests in agriculture in Israel and in other parts of the world - the fruit flies themselves.
Many of us are familiar with the appearance of the citrus peel pierced with ugly black dots. These points are the results of the bite of the female fruit fly. During the sting, the fly inserts its eggs under the shell, using a telescopic egg-laying tube. The larvae hatch and develop inside the fruit, which then rots. Later, the maggot will fall from the fruit to the ground, where it will continue its life course where it will turn into a pupa and an adult fly.
The flies produced at "Bio Play" are supposed to fight their harmful brethren and exterminate them, or as Deal Levy, the CEO of the factory, defines it, "We take the fly and use it against itself."
According to the pest control method, the factory raises pupae of male flies that, after hatching, will be sterilized by radioactive irradiation, and will be dispersed from a plane over the fields. Then the sterilized males are supposed to mate with the females in the field, who will lay infertile eggs. The life of the female lasts about five weeks, during which she will mate only once, which should ensure a reduction in the number of flies.
"If our flies are sexy enough," Levy praises his children, "most likely the female will mate with our male." According to Levy, "The intention is not to completely exterminate the fruit fly. First of all such mass pest control will cost a lot of money, but more importantly, in biological pest control one of the principles is not to make a certain species extinct, but to keep it at a low level. Suppress it and leave it at a level where it is no longer harmful. Extinction will lead to a violation of ecological balance and then another pest may emerge."
The pest control using sterilized fruit flies is already applied in South and Central America. Even in Israel, this type of pest control is already applied in the Arava region, where flies found in Guatemala are used. Now they will switch to using domestically produced flies in the Arabah, and at the same time the pest control will be applied in the Upper Galilee and other parts of the country.
The pest control initiative is by the Ministry of Agriculture and the growers' organizations. For the purpose of its implementation, the Israel Atomic Energy Commission harnessed the UN Atomic Energy Agency. The UN sees the project as a platform for spreading green, clean and environmentally friendly technology, and at the same time as a tool for bringing the peoples of the region closer together. "The fly knows no boundaries," they say in Bio Play.
In Arava, the Israeli and Jordanian farmers are already enjoying the action of the sterilized flies. Soon such flies will also be dropped in the fields near the northern border between the countries. The factory hopes that similar cooperation will be done with the Palestinian Authority, and one day with other countries in the region.
For those who live near agricultural areas and are afraid of swarms of flies that will become part of their daily life, Bio Play assures that "the Mediterranean fruit fly is not disturbing. He stares at the fruits and is not in a hurry to go anywhere. It's not the snoozing house fly that we know badly."
