The title of this article is enough to pique curiosity. Science from the 1950’s recently earned the Golden Goose Award. The research laid the groundwork for modern day approaches to insect pest controls.
Source: Drovers CattleNetwork, June 23, 2016.
Through their work on the basic biology of adult flies, the late Edward F. Knipling and Raymond C. Bushland developed a way to sterilize large numbers of male flies, leaving them healthy enough to mate but resulting in the female’s eggs being non-fertile. Their sterile insect technique (SIT), which uses low levels of radiation on male flies which are then released into the wild, eventually led to eradication of the screwworm fly, Cochliomyia hominivorax in the United States in 1966.