Meals, Ready to Eat (MREs) for Mosquitoes

Sam Telford III of Tufts University in the U.S. will develop a dried, vacuum-packed blood-based meal for mass rearing mosquitoes to support disease control efforts. Feeding mosquitoes with fresh blood is problematic due to complex material requirements and varying quality. They will first optimize the composition of sugar- supplemented blood for supporting healthy reproduction of Aedes and Anopheles mosquitoes. Then they will test its stability after different methods of freeze-drying and packaging under varying storage and handling conditions. The final formulation will be tested on field-collected mosquitoes.