“…This includes strategies to elicit natural plant defenses and immune responses through priming (Worrall et al, 2011), advanced breeding techniques/genetic modification (Bruce, 2012), or plant-or microbe-derived molecules (Wiesel et al, 2014), including plant hormones (De Mesmaeker et al, 2019). One novel approach for eliciting or enhancing plant defenses is through the use of RNA (hostinduced sRNA, dsRNA, or RNAi) for targeted gene silencing in fungal pathogens (Niu et al, 2021). RNA-based crop protection technologies can prevent colonization and infection of crop species by fungal pathogens [e.g., of Sclerotinia sclerotiorum, the causal agent of white stem rot in canola (McLoughlin et al, 2018)] and, in some cases, directly reduce the virulence of fungal pathogens [e.g., of Botrytis cinerea, which causes gray mold (Cai et al, 2018)].…”