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Facing increasing needs to feed human populations requires, more than ever, enhancing quantity, quality, safety and security of agricultural products, and, at the same time, to reduce environmental contamination. Thus, in livestock production, it is required to control blood-feeding flies such as tabanids and stable flies which are responsible of annual losses estimated at 130Kg of milk/cow and 25-60Kg of meat/ox. To the huge blood spoliation (up to 0.5 liter/day) are added: stress, loss of appetite and energy, immunosuppression and mechanical transmission of viruses (equine infectious anemia, ovine catarrhal fever), bacteria (Q fever, anthrax) and parasites (Besnoitia, Trypanosoma), with dramatic medical and economic consequences. Control of hematophagous flies is most often neglected or occasional, since insecticide spraying on walls or animals (spray, pour on) is expensive, of low efficacy and meets increasing chemo-resistance problems. Moreover, residues contamination of animal products and environment is unacceptable, especially for organic farming. Tsetse fly control using insecticide impregnated targets proved to be efficient in Africa, because tsetse flies have low prolificacy and are very sensitive to insecticides. Unfortunately this does not apply to other hematophagous flies such as Tabanids (> 4000 species present in all types of environments and climates), Stomoxys (one species is cosmopolite) and other hematophagous insects such as Haematobia and Musca crassirostris, which are highly prolific, and may develop early chemo-resistance to insecticides. FlyScreen project aims at the development and optimization of efficient, low cost and low or non-polluting methods for the control of hematophagous insects. It will consist in: (i) designing and optimizing specific color baited attractant screens/traps (excluding pollinators); (ii) developing and evaluating in laboratory conditions various toxic systems including: growth hormones or insecticides incorporation into polymers (slow release), single or combined, UV and water-protection and/or special abrasive coating (which advantage is the absence of chemo-resistance) and attractants; (iii) evaluating and validating these screens in semi-liberty and field conditions to measure efficacy and environmental safety; and (iv) promoting low-cost, low-polluting, and possibly insecticide-free control methods. FlyScreen project will be carried out in partnership by UMR17/InterTryp (CIRAD-bios) bringing expertise in biting insects and tropical field spots for evaluation, as well as expertise on mathematical modeling to support impact and cost studies; UMR1225/ IHAP (National Veterinary School of Toulouse ; ENVT), bringing biological material (evaluation on laboratory reared stomoxes) and field spots in France, UMR 5175/CEFE UPVM (University Paul-Valery, Montpellier), bringing expertise in stomoxes and biting insect trapping technologies, Kasetsart University (Bangkok, Thailand) offering facilities for field experimentation in a rich entomofauna area, and “AtoZ” enterprise, specialized in the development, production and commercialization of attractive fabrics and/or mosquito nets, processed under various technologies including biocide incorporation and coating. Additional support from CIRDES and IRD will allow extending the evaluation of toxic fabrics and screens to tsetse flies. Relevant treatment technologies and prototyping will be handled by AtoZ enterprise, while optimization, validation and safety assessment of screens will be handled by public organisms. These low cost targeted and environmentally friendly control tools should be easy to adopt. They will bring a major breakthrough in the control of hematophagous flies, so far neglected due to the low efficacy and high cost of current insecticide spraying systems. Development of insecticide-free attractive lethal screens is the ultimate goal of FlyScreen.
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