Helicoverpa Resistant Chickpea Plants: From Bt Toxins to Plant-Mediated RNAi

Year 2017, Volume: 3 Issue: 1, 52 - 60, 31.01.2017

Surender Khatodıa

Abstract

Helicoverpa armigera, the pod borer is a major constraint to global chickpea production. Genetic improvement of chickpea
for insect resistance by traditional methods has been hampered by narrow genetic diversity in the elite gene pool.
Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) chickpea plants expressing Bt genes as well as pyramids also have been developed already
and many are in field trials. But, already available Bt crops like cotton have increased the insect resistance to transgenic
plants in H. armigera. Although Bt chickpeas have yet to be commercialized, but the sustainability of Btcrops is vulnerable
to the insect resistance in Helicoverpa. The next generation approach for crop protection against Helicoverpa is to
knock down the crucial physiology-related genes of insect pests using transgenic plants, which is called Plant-mediated
RNAinterference (RNAi). Common small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) for the target genes of H. armigera, designed in
silico could be used to study the lethal effect of down-regulating crucial target genes in chickpea. This review describes
the progress of developing resistance to H. armigera in chickpea using Bt toxin genes and the future prospects of using
plant-mediated RNAi for H. armigera resistance. The plant-mediated RNAi approach holds great promise for future
development but further studies will be required to optimize RNAi-based strategies for chickpea protection against
H. armigera using integrated pest management strategies.

Keywords

Chickpea, Bt toxin, Plant-mediated RNAi, siRNA, Helicoverpa.

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