Sterile moths wipe out cotton pest,  Arizona farms are all but 'pinkie'-free for the first time in nearly a century.

In 2005, the Pink Bollworm Rearing Facility in Phoenix began cranking out pinkies for the Arizona experiment. The factory treated the moths with just enough radiation to damage the chromosomes in their reproductive cells without causing injuries that would prevent their survival in the wild. Over the course of each growing season for the next four years, about 2 billion pink bollworm moths were released into Arizona's cotton fields.

By 2009, a survey of 16,600 cotton bolls from conventional crops yielded only two pink bollworm larvae, and farmers had stopped using insecticide sprays to keep the pinkie population in check. So far, no live pink bollworm caterpillars have been found in bolls of cotton this season, says Tabashnik.

In Arizona, says Tabashnik, it's conceivable that farmers will someday no longer have a use for Bt cotton at all. "For that to happen, it's not a question of whether pink bollworm is eradicated or not, it's a question of how economically damaging it is," he says. "And in 2009 and 2010, pink bollworm was no longer an economically damaging pest in Arizona."

http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101107/full/news.2010.585.html

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