Non-radiative and non-gm sterile insect technology (sit) for the control of harmful insects

The present technology pertains to a fundamentally new idea to sterilize male insect pests by means of a targeted heat treatment and use this as a sterile insect technique (SIT) for a species-specific biological control method that can reduce or eliminate populations of pest insects without the need of chemical pesticides or genetically-modified insects. In particular, the present technology pertains to methods for the suppression of a target pest population comprising introducing a plurality of heat-treated sterile males of the target pestto the target pest population, wherein the males are heat-treated for a period of time.