Texas A&M AgriLife will play a major role in protecting the U.S. livestock industry from New World screwworm (NWS) after securing leadership roles in seven projects funded through the USDA’s $105 million NWS Grand Challenge initiative.
The program, launched in January, seeks innovative solutions to improve detection, control and eradication readiness for the pest. AgriLife researchers were selected to lead projects focused on sterile insect technology, outbreak preparedness, biopesticide development, surveillance systems, artificial intelligence-based wound detection and noninvasive larval sensing.
AgriLife also contributes to seven additional projects and is conducting separate USDA-funded research on electron beam sterilization technology.
As of June 24, a total of 16 NWS cases were reported as active in the U.S.
