Agragene and Associates Insectary partner on gene editing approach to SWD control
- bryanwitherbee
- Apr 22
- 8 min read
Kerry Halladay April 08, 2025 04:25 PM
The companies hope their partnership and a high-tech twist on sterile insect technique strategies will pave the way for the future for berry growers.
Agragene and Associates Insectary have announced a partnership to advance Agragene’s KNOCKOUT SWD technology targeting spotted wing drosophila (SWD), a top pest of fresh berries. Agragene’s technology, still in development, uses gene editing to create sterile male SWD. Associates Insectary, which specializes in high-volume insect production, will rear the sterile males at their Santa Paula, Calif., facility.
Matt Helms, Agragene’s chief commercial officer, says the company reached out to Associates Insectary for a partnership for several reasons, including its respected reputation and extensive expertise. But a shared entrepreneurial spirit is at the heart of the partnership, he said.
“They are looking ahead from a vision perspective and trying to invest their time and partnerships into new technologies that can be game changing. That attracted us to each other,” Helms told The Packer.
A new twist on an old strategy
Both companies see strong potential for future pest control in KNOCKOUT SWD. The technology applies the tried-and-true sterile insect technique (SIT) to SWD, but with a twist: gene editing.
“KNOCKOUT is basically a gene edited process,” explained Bryan Witherbee, Agragene CEO. “We’re targeting two genes in particular; one that is responsible for female development and one that is responsible for spermatogenesis, or development of sperm.”
The result of this approach is an efficient process to produce only sterile male SWD eggs, Witherbee said. This contrasts with the traditional SIT process. That involves rearing the target pest to adulthood, sorting males from females, then irradiating the males.
While this process has been used effectively for decades, Witherbee called it time-consuming, labor-intensive and expensive. Irradiating the adult males comes with potential issues as well, starting with the impact of irradiation on the insects.
“It’s the same as for humans; it’s hard on you physically,” explained Chris Adams, assistant professor of tree fruit entomology at Oregon State University. Adams led a USDA-permitted experimental release of KNOCKOUT SWD in partnership with Agragene last summer.
“[Irradiation] kills and breaks down lots of cells, so there is a fitness cost,” Adams said.
Some of that fitness cost is dead, instead of just sterile, males. But it can also mean the sterile males that survive the irradiation process might not be able to compete against wild males to mate, Adams said.
The materials needed for the irradiation process also come with their own drawbacks. Adams explained most SIT programs use radioactive cobalt, a regulated substance.
"We know this is a very needed product. This is something that growers are anticipating."
Bryan Witherbee, Agragene CEO
Witherbee sees a lot of advantages to KNOCKOUT SWD's gene editing spin on SIT.
“Once we get the egg made, in terms of the sterile male, we don’t touch them,” he said, so the process sidesteps the drawbacks of irradiation-based SIT. He explained eggs will be packaged together with a food source in a convenient box. This can be placed in orchards or berry farms. The sterile males will develop inside the box until they reach adulthood and fly out to do their work.
Better together to battle SWD
Helms explained that in the planned partnership with Associates Insectary, Agragene will provide the breeding lines, one edited for non-viability in females and one edited for sterility in males, to Associates Insectary, who will then rear, pack and distribute them, something it is well equipped to do.
“Associates Insectary has the processes, controls and expertise to consistently rear our KNOCKOUT insect technology solution and is also strategically located in a key market geography,” Helms said in the companies’ joint news release.
Zach Slaughter of Associates Insectary also highlighted his company’s important location in Ventura County, near so many berry farms in California. With so many growers so close, he told The Packer the company has been able to hand-deliver beneficial insects to its customers. Slaughter said Associates Insectary long ago realized the industry needs transparent, reliable suppliers of beneficials.
“So, we quickly knew that we were going to focus on being a reliable producer that is not out to compete against our peer insectaries, but instead collaborate and support. In six months, we have partnered in some fashion with four other beneficial insectaries and providers to contract rear, assisting in stabilizing supply in key beneficials they identified needing production support in,” Slaughter said.
He added that at Associates Insectary, “We truly believe ‘a rising tide lifts all boats,’” a mindset he said Agragene also embodies.
He called the partnership with Agragene on KNOCKOUT SWD something of a passion project for Associates Insectary given the compatibility of the two companies’ goals.
“Our mission is to advance the use of beneficials and other biocontrols over the use of harmful chemicals,” Slaughter said. “Outside of the obvious that [Agragene is] producing a beneficial insect and we are a commercial insectary, their focus in providing an accessible and scalable solution for growers as a way to execute their mission compliments ours.”
“The partnership with Associates Insectary enables us to scale our groundbreaking technology and bring it to growers who are desperately seeking insect control solutions,” Helms said in the release.
Tiny flies mean huge problems for berry growers
According to Adams, berry growers are indeed in need of solutions to the SWD problem because it is a massive one. A 2021 report in Entomology Today estimated the damage caused to U.S. fruit growers by SWD at $500 million annually.
“I think they are the biggest threat to soft fruit and berries,” Adams said.
He explained the basics of the SWD. They are relatively new invasive pests. Unlike native or more established berry pests, SWD can attack undamaged or unripe fruit. Worse, they reproduce stunningly fast.
Under the proper conditions, such as the warm months of summer, a SWD can go from egg to adult in seven to 10 days. Females can lay up to 600 eggs during their lifetime. Adults usually live for two to nine weeks but can overwinter under the right conditions.
“They’re survivors, and they do a really good job of making more flies,” Adams said.
The prolific nature of SWD means growers must be rigorous about pesticide application. “If you skip a week and you don’t spray, you end up with infested fruit,” Adams said.
This causes problems for organic and smaller growers, especially the small “mom and pop” U-pick farms, he said. But it also poses issues for conventional growers on labor, Helms added.
“This is all hand harvested, so the reentry or preharvest intervals — it varies a little bit on these products — really impacts the timing that the farmer can have his harvest crews rotate around to the different fields and maximize the yield opportunity.”
Adams also pointed out the damage SWD do to fruit, and their larva, look like that of the Western cherry fruit fly, a quarantine pest. This causes problems at the packing level.
“If it ends up in the packing house on the line, and they catch maggots inside of fruit, they have to stop the production line and ID what you have,” Adams said. “And because Western chair fruit fly restricts export of the fruit, you have to reject the whole load. You can’t take the chance.
“So growers hands are kind of tied right now to a very expensive and frequent pesticide application,” he continued. “So that’s why we’re really excited about this new sterile insect release technique from Agragene. It’s another tool; we don’t currently have a sterile insect release technique for spotted wing drosophila.”
A path forward for future pest projects
Helms described growers as throwing the kitchen sink at the SWD problem right now. Witherbee added growers are hungry for tools. They, like Adams, hope their KNOCKOUT SWD could be another tool in berry growers’ arsenal.
Though the technology is still in the research phase, Agragene envisions a 12-week program beginning when berries start flowering. This is roughly three or four weeks before wild SWD begin emerging, according to Helms. Growers would receive shipments of the boxed KNOCKOUT SWD every two weeks during the program. The boxes would be hung in trees, or on trellises or vines to get the gene-edited flies out into the fields ahead of the wild type.
“Our goal is that this is a foundational program. Kind of like with the COVID curve, instead of letting [SWD numbers] spike, we want to keep it down and push it out,” Adams said. “We believe we can have an opportunity to increase yields, increase quality and likely reduce the need for reliance on insecticides.”
"This is much more environmentally friendly way to control insects and I just think it's going to be - once they figure out how to get this to scale - a really exciting technique. And I think it's going to be a great tool for growers everywhere."
Chris Adams, assistant professor of tree fruit entomology at Oregon State University
Witherbee said they project KNOCKOUT SWD will be available to growers sometime in 2027. The next step to getting there, however, is an experimental use permit from EPA. He said they expect to submit the experimental use permit (EUP) package within the month. The company is already looking for growers interested in participating in anticipation of the permit.
“Once we do get the approval from the EPA to do the experimental use permit, that opens up the amount of acreage that we can do. We are already kind of reaching out to some early adopters in terms of growers that are interested in trying this out with us.”
While Witherbee and Helms were excited about the potential for specifically the KNOCKOUT SWD technology, they both were also very hopeful about what it could mean for the future of the beneficials industry.
“Hopefully, as we work our way through, this truly becomes a template for the next generation,” Helms said.
Though SIT is a decades-old strategy, thus far genetic editing for sterility has only been used on mosquitoes. Using gene editing to produce SIT for agricultural pests is new regulatory terrain. Helms said he was excited to “start paving the regulatory path forward in the U.S. and new countries” with what Agragene is doing.
He added that the company is already thinking about next potential targets for the technology, including olive fruit fly, Mediterranean fruit fly and naval orange worm.
“At least two of those will be moving forward in parallel, but that is going to be a little bit of an evolution for the company,” he said.
Witherbee noted partnerships with insectaries like Associates Insectary will be key to those efforts.
“Hopefully the relationship and the learnings they got from this first one will carry over to the next and second and third insect, as we move these through,” Witherbee said.
Find more at The Packer
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