Research project title:  Developing a tool for contaminating wild Glossina fuscipes species with lethal doses of Metarhizium anisopliae.

Naomi is a DRIP MSc fellow supervised by Drs. Michael Okal, Dan Masiga (icipe) and Prof. Elizabeth Kokwaro (Kenyatta University). Naomi’s research interests include Mycology, Molecular Biology and Medical Entomology and is currently developing a tool for contaminating wild Glossina fuscipes species with lethal doses of Metarhizium anisopliae.

Tsetse control strategies put in place are greatly limited due to their high costs and environmental implications. Some of the controls involve use of insecticides, repellents and baited targets/traps majorly to control the vectors. The use of chemotherapy has been adopted to deal with the Trypanosoma pathogen. Generally, no control strategy that has proven to be satisfactory as a standalone. This therefore calls for development of new strategies as well as having integrated strategies for effective disease and vector control. The study focuses on control of tsetse using a pathogen; this is by formulation of Metarhizium anisopliae as a mycopesticide which has been found to be a viable in the control of tsetse flies and especially Glossina fuscipes sp. in the field and using a tiny target as the conidia delivery tool. Naomi completed her undergraduate studies in Bsc. Biology at the University of Nairobi.