National Sterile Insect Technique Day, Tuesday 2 December 2025 at the CTIFL centre in Balandran.

BigSis has a distinctive approach to sterile insect technique (SIT) based on two objectives: facilitating scalability and minimising regulatory compliance requirements. The automated, individualised rearing and processing system has additional advantages including adaptability to local strains and providing big data for optimisation. The platform technology can readily be applied to a broad range of commercially important pest species. The first production system, for spotted wing drosophila (SWD, Drosophila suzukii), is now being ramped from 100s of thousands to millions of sterile males per week, in parallel to ongoing improvements in efficiency. Due to the non-toxic, species-specific and native origin of sterile males that cannot establish, BigSis is able to sell an SIT-based SWD control solution commercially without a permit in England. This has enabled paid field projects since 2021, including two published trials. A trial on 10.4 Ha commercial potted raspberries grown in open polytunnels demonstrated, compared to control plots that each received one spray of Spinosad, up to 88% reduction in wild adult female SWD per trap, up to 80% reduction in larvae per fruit and up to 58% reduction in fruit waste at harvest (https://doi.org/10.3390/insects16080791). In 2025, BigSis successfully protected 74 Ha commercial blackberries, raspberry, strawberries and cherry crops. As our automated system has reached the inflexion point for scalability, we are seeking to expand domestically and internationally in measured steps.