How the IAEA makes use of nuclear expertise to regulate insect pests

The Worldwide Atomic Power Company (IAEA) is usually talked about within the context of nuclear safeguards, particularly relating to nations like Iran, and North Korea, or on the JCPOA, generally referred to as the Iran nuclear deal. The Company is nonetheless additionally very a lot concerned in civilian functions of nuclear expertise. It has been on the forefront in aiding its member states in utilizing nuclear tech to handle well being, vitality, and water points, amongst others.
One attention-grabbing use of nuclear expertise by the IAEA is the Sterile Insect Method (SIT), a method which was invented within the USA round 60 years in the past. SIT permits for inhabitants management of insect pests reminiscent of fruit flies, tsetse fly, screwworm, moths, and mosquitoes, that destroy crops and livestock, and within the course of undermine worldwide commerce and meals safety in a number of nations. In 2021, the Meals and Agriculture Group estimated that insect pests destroy as much as 40 p.c of world crops and value $220 billion of losses.
The IAEA researches and develops numerous functions of this method in its laboratories at Seibersdorf, Austria. It then shares its information and experience with member states by means of the Joint FAO/IAEA Centre of Nuclear Methods in Meals and Agriculture, in addition to the Company’s personal technical cooperation tasks, ensuring that that is utilized the place wanted.
How does the Sterile Insect Method work?
In SIT, ionized radiation, which is when “an electron is given enough energy to break away from an atom“, is used to sterilise numerous male bugs in a laboratory, the place they’ve been reared. The bugs are then launched into the wild inhabitants, permitting them to mate with feminine bugs which lay eggs however bear no offspring.

This system is totally different from the standard organic management of insect pests, which normally entails introducing non-native organic management brokers. SIT is an eco-friendly approach because the sterile bugs don’t self-replicate and set up themselves within the ecosystem, whereas breaking the pest’s reproductive cycle, resulting in inhabitants decline over time.