10095378BigSis Chemical-Free Insect Control: Robotics and AI Reinvent the Sterile Insect TechniqueClosedCollaborative R&DInnovate UKZyzzle is a British R&D-based company that develops chemical-free insect control solutions for agricultural, public health and other pests. We give growers urgently needed sustainable alternatives to chemical insecticides, boosting biodiversity and improving control of challenging pests. Zyzzle addresses the challenges of scaling up sterile male insect production for the sterile insect technique (SIT). SIT is the only biocontrol that consistently outperforms chemical insecticides, but it is not economically viable with traditional processes. One issue is the need to sort and release only males, which is prohibitively expensive by hand. Another issue can be the deleterious effects of insect sterilisation; if fitness is greatly reduced then more males are needed, or the technique may become impossible. A third issue is scaling the rearing of new insect species; increasing the batch size enables contamination to start sooner and spread further, while creating a new learning curve for the team. Glen Slade, Zyzzle Founder and CEO was inspired by his research into automation and artificial intelligence to take the counterintuitive step of rearing insects individually to produce very large numbers. The transition to individualised rearing of insects brings three immediate benefits: • Avoids cross-contamination. Production in larger batches means contamination occurs sooner and spreads further. We rear each insect in a covered pot that protects it from contaminants. • Avoids a new learning curve. Biology does not scale; creating a larger set of equipment needs significant development and optimisation. We focus on expertly rearing one insect in one cell and then replicating this to scale up. • Builds big data for machine learning. Access to extensive data about rearing conditions and yield will provide insights for optimisation that are traditionally unavailable. Season-long insect control will be sold to growers as a service, whereby Zyzzle will produce each species in a highly automated micro-production unit (MPU) and make regular releases on the customers' farms as well as monitoring the population of the target pest in and around the crop. Our world-first field trial, using SIT against spotted wing drosophilia (an invasive pest of high value soft fruit including strawberries, raspberries and cherries) in open polytunnels, was a resounding success, achieving season-long control and up to 91% suppression. In this project, Zyzzle will develop a next-generation micro-production unit that is suitable for replication in the UK and internationally.