National Sterile Insect Technique Day, Tuesday 2 December 2025 at the CTIFL centre in Balandran.
The onion fly, Delia antiqua (Diptera: Anthomyiidae), and the cabbage fly, D. radicum, are major pests of onion and crucifer crops in temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere. In Canada, the control of these species relies mainly on the use of broad-spectrum insecticides applied as seed treatments or soil treatment at sowing. The frequent use of pesticides has led to the development of pest resistance as well as water contamination in agricultural areas. To address these challenges, a pest management program based on the Sterile Insect Technique (SIT) was implemented in Quebec. This program was inspired by the success achieved in the Netherlands, where SIT has been used since the early 1980s for the control of the onion fly. In Quebec, deployed on a large scale for about fifteen years, SIT has experienced remarkable growth: the treated areas have increased eightfold and now cover approximately 35% of the total onion-growing area. The intensification of release strategies has made it possible to reduce release rates by 90% (number of flies released per hectare), making the costs of SIT more competitive with those of chemical insecticides. As demonstrated from other SIT programs, this large-scale approach provides a highly effective, species-specific control method with minimal environmental impacts.