Winnipeg

A University of Manitoba professor has developed a plan to control mosquito populations: Nipping them in the bud.

Steve Whyard, an associate professor of biological sciences, is currently working on reducing the numbers of the annoying insects by sterilizing them through “RNA interference” so their female partners will be unable to reproduce.

“We were looking to develop mosquito control in a way that doesn’t rely on pesticides,” Whyard said Monday. “This (sterilization of the males) won’t kill them instantly like pesticides do.”

In fact, it would take a couple of years to significantly reduce their population.

“We can target certain genes and design it so that it would affect only one species of mosquito,” said Whyard, who would start off by addressing the disease-carrying insect in urban areas. “There’s fewer of them so we could show that it works.

“And we need to confirm that it is safe to do.”

Once proven, the program could be used to control the populations of mosquitoes that carry malaria and dengue fever in other countries, Whyard said.

“It’s great in theory and if we lived on an island, it may work,” said former city entomologist Taz Stuart, who now works for Poulin’s. “It’s great on paper but it’s difficult to make it work. And he would need permission from Health Canada.”

Whyard is breeding the sterilized males in his Winnipeg lab, but his research will still take “a couple more years” to finalize, he said.

A similar method has been tried in the past, but the male mosquitoes were sterilized through radiation.

“But the radiation makes them weaker so they aren’t as aggressive with the females,” Whyard said.

The trouble is the plan currently costs as much as “a few hundred dollars” for every 1,000 mosquitoes,” Whyard said.

“But the price is coming down. We have some chemical companies that would be willing to do this for us.”

The federal government is funding Whyard’s research, but he would need some investors to start the mosquito-control as a business, he said. It could cost as much as $200,000 a year.

Whyard did talk to the City of Winnipeg when he first started his research, but has yet to officially approach it as a possibility of replacing the use of malathion to kill the insects.

The same plan could be used to control the populations of other insects, such as certain species of fruit fly that cause significant problems in some countries, Whyard said.

jim.bender@sunmedia.ca

Twitter: @bendersun