Transgenic Improvement for Biotic Resistance of Crops

Abstract

Biotic constraints, including pathogenic fungi, viruses and bacteria, herbivory insects, as well as parasitic nematodes, cause significant yield loss and quality deterioration of crops. The effect of conventional management of these biotic constraints is limited. The advances in transgenic technologies provide a direct and directional approach to improve crops for biotic resistance. More than a hundred transgenic events and hundreds of cultivars resistant to herbivory insects, pathogenic viruses, and fungi have been developed by the heterologous expression of exogenous genes and RNAi, authorized for cultivation and market, and resulted in a significant reduction in yield loss and quality deterioration. However, the exploration of transgenic improvement for resistance to bacteria and nematodes by overexpression of endogenous genes and RNAi remains at the testing stage. Recent advances in RNAi and CRISPR/Cas technologies open up possibilities to improve the resistance of crops to pathogenic bacteria and plant parasitic nematodes, as well as other biotic constraints.

Improvement of economic and useful characters of wheat using RNA interference technology

“…Plant viruses pose a significant threat to wheat and cause approximately 10-15% of crop losses (Yu et al, 2022). Methods aimed at activating the key components of the plant's RNAi mechanism and directing them against the nucleotide sequences of invasive nucleic acids of pathogens can increase the level of antiviral protection.…”

“…Methods aimed at activating the key components of the plant's RNAi mechanism and directing them against the nucleotide sequences of invasive nucleic acids of pathogens can increase the level of antiviral protection. One of the most common approaches in this way is the genetic transformation of plants with constructs containing sense or antisense nucleotide sequences that copy the nucleotide sequences of the viral genome (Abdellatef et al, 2021;Akbar et al, 2022;Yu et al, 2022). In addition, chimeric hairpin constructs carrying sequences from different viruses have been successfully used to induce multiple resistance against target viruses in transgenic plants (Halder et al, 2023).…”

“…Similar to chimeric hairpin constructs acting on different viruses, chimeric constructs carrying sequences of different genes of the same virus have been used to maximize resistance efficacy (Lacombe et al, 2021;Akbar et al, 2022). As a rule, to provide resistance to certain strains of viruses, nucleotide sequences encoding viral suppressor proteins or proteins responsible for cell entry, division or spread of the virus are selected as targets (Yu et al, 2022).…”

“…RNAi was also used to control the pest insects that cause significant crop loss (Zhang et al, 2017;Yu et al, 2022). Some insects (particularly, Coleoptera (beetles)) were demonstrated to be highly sensitive to dsRNA (Baum & Roberts, 2014), so that only small amounts of ingested dsRNA can induce RNAi, knocking down both transcripts and important target genes of insect lethality.…”

Appressoria Formation in Phytopathogenic Fungi Suppressed by Antimicrobial Peptides and Hybrid Peptides from Black Soldier Flies

“…Thus, AMPs that are originally from insects have diverse sources, and their potential use in agriculture should be explored [31][32][33]. Therefore, in comparison with single peptides, hybrid peptides that cross the active regions of two AMPs together have been confirmed to broaden the antibacterial spectrum in transgenic plants [14,15].…”