Genetic engineering of crops for insect resistance: An overview
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Review Genetic engineering of crops for insect resistance: An overview ASHWINI TALAKAYALA, SUMALATHA KATTA and MALLIKARJUNA GARLADINNE* Plant Molecular Biology laboratory, Agri Biotech Foundation, Rajendranagar, Hyderabad 500 030, India *Corresponding author (Email, [email protected])
Phytophagous insect incidence is a serious threat for reduction of crop productivity globally. There is an estimation of one fourth of crop is being destroyed by insects annually. Indeed, the development of insectresistant crops is a great milestone in agriculture to increase crop yield and reduce pesticide dependency. Genetic engineering facilitates development of insect resistant crops by expressing bacterial d-endotoxins and vegetative insecticidal proteins and other plant genes like lectins, protease inhibitors, etc. In addition, RNA interference and genome editing through CRISPR Cas9 also provides new solutions for the development of insect-resistant crops. The resultant genetically modified crops showed resistance against lepidopteran, dipteran, homopteran and coleopteran insects. The insect-resistant crops have made a significant economic impact worldwide in terms of higher yield and low pesticide usage. In this review, we focus on different strategies for developing transgenics against insect pest control by expressing different insecticidal proteins in crops. Keywords. Bacillus thuringenesis; CRISPR/Cas9; crystalline proteins; fusion proteins; insect resistance; RNA interference; transgenic crops; vegetative insecticidal proteins
1. Introduction Insect pests are the major biotic stress factor that causes considerable crop losses globally by direct feeding and transmission of plant diseases (Douglas 2018). Novel strategies to control a broad spectrum of phytophagous insect pests have been the mainstay of crop protection and thereby increasing the crop yield. Chewing and sap-sucking pests are the major insects, which cause significant damage to crop productivity (Vanti et al. 2018). Recent advances to understand the molecular basis of insect–plant interactions and biotechnological applications are providing solutions to meet the challenges. Genetic engineering plays a pivotal role in conferring resistance against insects (Birkett and Pickett 2014). This tool is being exploited to introduce specific DNA sequences or genes into crop plants through Agrobacterium-mediated transformation or
This article is part of the Topical Collection: Genetic Intervention in Plants: Mechanisms and Benefits. http://www.ias.ac.in/jbiosci
particle bombardment for insect control (Juturu et al. 2015). B. thuringiensis (Bt) is a gram-positive soil bacterium which forms parasporal crystals which contain insecticidal proteins ICPs (Panwar et al. 2018). ICPs are endotoxins that are highly toxic to certain classes of insects. They kill the insects by acting on epithelium tissue of midgut of the larvae of Lepidopteran, Coleopteran, Dipteran insects (Paul and Das 2020) (figure 1
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