Scientists achieve breakthrough in mosquito-borne disease control

A study team has created an automated system that can efficiently distinguish male and female mosquitoes, marking a technological breakthrough in the biological management of mosquito-borne disease.

The international research team, which included researchers from Michigan State University, Jinan University, and Guangzhou Wolbaki Biotech Co., Ltd., published their findings in the Science Robotics international academic journal on Wednesday.

Climate change and human migration have exacerbated mosquito-borne diseases, particularly dengue fever. According to Li Yongjun, an associate professor at Jinan University, chemical treatment has poor efficacy against these pests and causes environmental contamination and drug resistance.


On the benefits of biological control, Li stated, “Studies have shown that releasing male mosquitoes that do not bite or transmit diseases to mate with wild female mosquitoes can effectively control the wild mosquito population.”

Though this control technology has been proven effective in many countries to reduce the population density of wild disease-transmitting mosquitoes and the spread of dengue fever, its large-scale regional application has been hampered by the bottleneck issue of separating male and female mosquitos.

Gong Juntao, a researcher at Guangzhou Wolbaki Biotech Co., Ltd., stated that the team independently developed an automated equipment capable of efficiently stirring, separating, and collecting mosquito pupae. The automatic separator allows its operator to separate over 16 million male mosquitos by working eight hours a day, five days a week, a 17-fold increase over manual sex separation.

According to Gong, the results demonstrate that the automated gadget has the ability to assist successfully control tropical mosquito-borne diseases.

The device has been sold in 18 countries, including the USA, Australia, and Italy.