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Assessing the efficiency of Verily’s automated process for production and release of male Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes

Nature Biotechnology volume 40, pages 1441–1442 (2022)Cite this article

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Matters Arising to this article was published on 26 May 2022

The Original Article was published on 06 April 2020

arising from Crawford et al. Nature Biotechnology https://doi.org/10.1038/s41587-020-0471-x (2020).

A paper by Crawford et al.1 titled ‘Efficient production of male Wolbachia-infected Aedes aegypti mosquitoes enables large-scale suppression of wild populations’ reports a mosquito control suppression trial carried out from 2017 to 2018 in Fresco Country, California, USA1. Between 7.5 million and 14.4 million Wolbachia-infected male mosquitoes were released during the study, which achieved suppression rates of 69% and 95%, respectively. Although the work provided important insights for future Aedes genetic control programs—particularly the information on the immigration of fertile females into release areas—the paper contains several omissions and errors. Below, we discuss how these relate to three main areas: regulatory oversight, entomological efficiency and, finally, cost efficiency.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Insect Pest Control Sub-programme, Joint FAO/IAEA Centre of Nuclear Techniques in Food and Agriculture, Vienna, Austria

    Jérémy Bouyer, Hamidou Maiga & Marc J. B. Vreysen

  2. CIRAD, UMR ASTRE CIRAD-INRA « Animals, Health, Territories, Risks and Ecosystems», Campus international de Baillarguet, Montpellier, France

    Jérémy Bouyer

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  1. Jérémy Bouyer
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  3. Marc J. B. Vreysen
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J.B. conducted the competitiveness analysis and wrote the first draft of the paper. All authors contributed to the final version of the paper.

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Correspondence to Jérémy Bouyer.

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Bouyer, J., Maiga, H. & Vreysen, M.J.B. Assessing the efficiency of Verily’s automated process for production and release of male Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes. Nat Biotechnol 40, 1441–1442 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41587-022-01324-z

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