CRISPR-Bred Sterile Insects Emerge as Next-Generation Weapon Against Texas Pests

The oldest trick in biological pest control—flooding a field with sterile males until a population breeds itself into a dead end—is getting a gene-editing overhaul, and its backers are pitching it as the next tool for Texas producers fighting invasive insects.

Speaking from Lubbock, in the heart of Texas cotton country, Agragene chief executive Bryan Witherbee described a system that uses CRISPR to manufacture sterile male insects without the radiation that older programs relied on. The company is developing what researchers call the precision-guided sterile insect technique, and Witherbee frames it as a direct descendant of the method that once cleared two of agriculture's most notorious pests out of the United States.

Building on a Technique Texas Already Trusts

The sterile insect technique is not a laboratory novelty in Texas—it is history. Mid-century programs used irradiated flies to drive the New World screwworm out of the country, and sterile-male releases helped eradicate the pink bollworm from American cotton fields, sparing High Plains growers a pest that once devoured a share of every harvest. The logic is simple: release enough sterile males, and the wild females that mate with them produce no offspring, collapsing the population over successive generations.

That same playbook is back in force across Texas right now. As the New World screwworm has reappeared and spread to dozens of counties, federal and state agencies have leaned on sterile-fly releases—up to 100 million insects a week from cross-border production plants—as the cornerstone of the eradication effort. Witherbee's argument is that CRISPR can make the underlying technique sharper.

What the Gene Editing Changes

Traditional programs sterilize both sexes with radiation, an approach that can leave insects weakened and less able to compete for mates. The precision-guided method instead edits two genes—one essential for female viability, the other for male fertility—so that when engineered eggs are deployed, only sterile males hatch. Those males emerge fit enough to out-compete their wild rivals, and because the system does not persist or spread on its own in the environment, its developers argue it carries built-in safety features that should ease regulatory approval.

The result, Witherbee says, is a process that is more precise, more scalable, and potentially cheaper than trucking in radiation-sterilized insects—while sparing beneficial pollinators and cutting reliance on insecticides that pests increasingly shrug off.

From Fruit Flies to a Broader Platform

The technology traces to University of California researchers Nikolay Kandul and Omar Akbari, who first demonstrated precision-guided sterile insects in common fruit flies in 2019 and later adapted the system to the spotted-wing drosophila, an invasive fly that costs berry and fruit growers millions of dollars a year by laying eggs inside ripening produce. Agragene, co-founded by Akbari, licensed the base technology and has been running U.S. Department of Agriculture–administered field trials aimed at proving it safe and effective enough for broad agricultural use.

Its developers describe it as a platform that could eventually be ported to a range of crop and livestock pests rather than a fix for any single species—a claim that, if it holds, would matter to a state facing threats on multiple fronts at once.

Promising, but Not Yet in the Field

For all the momentum, the technology remains in evaluation, and no CRISPR sterile-insect product is treating Texas cotton or livestock pests today. Researchers are still working through field trials and the regulatory path, and Witherbee is careful to position the method as one tool among many—alongside conventional pesticides, biological controls, and conventional genetics—rather than a replacement for the systems producers use now. What is clear is that the sterile-insect idea Texas has relied on for more than half a century is being rebuilt with the sharpest tools modern biology has to offer.