Before revision: Economic uses of sterility Economic uses of sterility include: the production of certain kinds of seedless fruit, such as seedless tomato or watermelon (though sterility is not the only available route to fruit seedlessness); terminator technology, methods for restricting the use of genetically modified plants by causing second-generation seeds to be sterile; biological control; for example, trap-neuter-return programs for cats; and the sterile insect technique, in which large numbers of sterile insects are released, which compete with fertile insects for food and mates, thus reducing the population size of subsequent generations, which can be used to fight diseases spread by insect vectors such as malaria in mosquitoes.
After revision: Economic uses of sterility Economic uses of sterility include: The production of certain kinds of seedless fruit, such as seedless tomato or watermelon (though sterility is not the only available route to fruit seedlessness); Terminator technology, methods for restricting the use of genetically modified plants by causing second-generation seeds to be sterile; Biological control; for example, trap-neuter-return programs for cats; and the sterile insect technique, in which large numbers of sterile insects are released, which compete with fertile insects for food and mates, thus reducing the population size of subsequent generations, which can be used to fight diseases spread by insect vectors such as malaria in mosquitoes.