Irradiated Queensland fruit flies (Bactrocera tryoni) used in Sterile Insect Technique (SIT) programmes are marked with fluorescent dyes to distinguish them from wild flies when recaptured in monitoring traps. However, coating sterile pupae with powdered dyes can reduce emergence rates and fly quality and can sometimes produce insufficiently certain discrimination through inadequate coating or because the dye is transferred to wild flies through contact. Here we created a phenotypically distinct B. tryoni strain that lacks typical melanisation patterns through CRISPR/Cas9-mediated mutagenesis of tandemly duplicated yellow-y genes and then assessed effects of this visible trait on fly performance. Recessive mutations are only required in one of these copies to restrict melanisation and generate a phenotype clearly distinguished from wild type. The yellow strain showed significant declines in eclosion rates and in the percentage of fliers directly after emergence. Locomotor activity was greater in the yellow strain, and these mutations did not generally affect mating probability, copula latency, or copula duration. The longevity of yellow flies was approximately 10 days shorter than wild-type flies in both sexes. Overall, replacing dyes with yellow body marker for SIT can simplify production, eliminate a step that is known to reduce fly quality, remove potentially hazardous dyes from production, enable accurate discrimination from wild flies, and improve cost-effectiveness; however, direct comparisons of the decrements in performance associated with dyes on mass-reared wild-type flies and disruption of yellow-y genes are now required to determine the relative suitability of these marking methods for B. tryoni SIT.

在无菌昆虫技术（SIT）程序中使用的昆士兰辐照果蝇（Bactrocera tryoni）用荧光染料标记，以便在重新捕获到监测陷阱中时将它们与野蝇区分开。但是，用粉状染料包被无菌sterile可以降低出苗率和蝇的品质，有时由于包衣不足或由于染料通过接触转移到野蝇而不能产生足够的确定性。在这里，我们创建了一个在表型上不同的B. tryoni菌株，该菌株缺乏通过CRISPR / Cas9介导的串联重复黄色-y诱变的典型黑化模式。基因，然后评估该可见性状对果蝇性能的影响。仅在这些拷贝之一中需要隐性突变以限制黑色素化并产生明显不同于野生型的表型。黄色菌株在出苗后直接表现出显着降低的落种率和飞行物百分比。黄色菌株的自发活动较大，这些突变一般不会影响交配概率，copula潜伏期或copula持续时间。两种雌性黄蝇的寿命都比野生型蝇短约10天。总体而言，用黄色车身标记物替代SIT可以简化生产，消除已知的会降低果蝇质量的步骤，从生产中去除潜在的有害染料，从而能够准确区分野蝇，并提高成本效益；但是，直接比较了大量繁殖的野生型果蝇上与染料相关的性能下降情况和现在需要使用yellow-y基因来确定这些标记方法对B. tryoni SIT的相对适用性。