Optical sorter

The U.S. Department of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, intends to issue a request for quotes for an optical sorter.

Background: The Mexican Fruit Fly Rearing Facility in Edinburg, Texas, produces Anastrepha ludens, a pest of commercial citrus growing regions of the United States. The Rearing Facility uses Sterile Insect Technique to rear flies from the egg stage to the pupae stage, exposes the pupae to radiation to render the pupae sterile and unable to produce viable offspring.

Sterile pupae produced at the Rearing Facility are reared to the adult stage at the Eclosion and Release Facility and released aerially in Cameron, Hidalgo, and Willacy counties in Texas and along the Texas-Mexican border. Sterile flies mate with wild flies thereby suppressing and eradicating the wild population. The Rearing Facility is about to begin producing a new fruit fly strain, the Black Pupae Strain (BPS-10).

BPS-10 strain flies express sexually dimorphic color pigmentation, allowing for sorting and removing female flies prior to emergence and release. An automated sorting machine is required to separate male and female flies, and to process millions of male flies that are produced daily in the Rearing Facility. The NAICS code for this project is 334516 Analytical Laboratory Instrument Manufacturing, with a small business size standard of 1,000 employees. Questions concerning this synopsis should be directed to Jim Roloff, contracting officer, at james.g.roloff@usda.gov.