How it works
Insect females only mate once. Overwhelming an area with sterile males (males don’t cause damage) leads to a population suppression of >90%.
This is called the Sterile insect technique (SIT) – a highly effective & eco-friendly pest control method.
Advantages
Targeted
Male insects are naturally effective in locating females
Eco-friendly & Species specific
No harm to beneficial insects or the environment
Limitations
Despite its effectiveness and sustainability, SIT implementation has thus far been limited due to:
- Precision – SIT requires a precise separation of males (only female insects cause damage).
- Cost – current technologies sex-sort adult insects when they are fragile and have a short lifespan. This prohibits shipping and requires building an insect production factory near every release site.
Introducing “SIT-as-a-service”
Diptera.ai combines proprietary optics, computer-vision, deep biology, and automation to sex-sort insects at the larval stage. This was previously considered impossible. As larvae are robust and take up to 10 days to mature, shipping them is practical.
Thus allowing for a centralized mass production and distribution of sterile males.
With SIT-as-a-service, instead of building and maintaining insect factories, customers subscribe to a service and receive shipments of sterile males ready-for-release.
Introducing “SIT-as-a-service”
Diptera.ai combines computer-vision, deep biology, and automation to sex-sort insects at the larval stage, which was previously considered impossible. Larvae are robust and take up to 10 days to become adults, which makes shipping them practical. This allows for a centralized mass production of sterile males, and then shipment to the end customers for release.
With SIT-as-a-service, instead of building and maintaining insect factories, customers subscribe to a service to receive shipments of sterile mosquito males ready for release.
Today, an insect factory is required near every release site
Diptera.ai enables centralized production
“Like the cloud disrupted the computing industry with affordable,
on-demand computing power. Diptera.ai disrupts pest control with an affordable SIT-as-a-service.”
Vic Levitin
CEO, Diptera.ai