Efficient control of western flower thrips by plastid-mediated RNA interference

Abstract

Significance Thrips are a group of piercing-sucking pest insects that do massive damage in agriculture and horticulture. The western flower thrip is a particularly notorious pest that has spread all over the world and is extremely difficult to control. In this work, we have shown that upon feeding, thrips take up substantial quantities of chloroplast RNA. When we expressed from the chloroplast genome long double-stranded RNAs that are targeted against essential thrip genes, the RNAs induced a potent RNA interference response and efficiently killed the insects. Our study demonstrates that an important group of nonchewing pest insects can be targeted by plant-mediated RNA interference and provides an efficient weapon to control thrips and other sucking plant pests.

Application progress of plant-mediated RNAi in pest control

“… Kaplanoglu et al (2022) demonstrated that PT-mediated resistant tomato plant expressing dsRNA of the v-ATPase A gene exhibited significant feeding inhibition against leaf-chewing and lacerating- and flush-feeding insects, but poor feeding inhibition against sap-sucking insects. Wu et al (2022) published a compromise study on the successful control for absorbing-mouthpart insects by PT-mediated RNAi plant. PT plants were evaluated for the control of Frankliniella occidentalis , which feeds with its rasping-sucking mouthparts.…”

“…Additionally, PT plants were more robust due to significant reduction in the feeding of F. occidentalis on their leaves. Therefore, the PT-mediated RNAi strategy provides significantly more effective control of F. occidentalis than the traditional NT strategy ( Wu et al, 2022 ).…”

Engineering chloroplasts for insect pest control

“…In PNAS, Wu et al. ( 16 ) extend chloroplast-expressed dsRNA to control a nonchewing insect, western flower thrip (WFT; Frankliniella occidentalis ), a destructive pest and virus vector that feeds on a wide range of outdoor crops and greenhouse vegetable and flower crops ( Fig. 1 ).…”

“…Next, Wu et al. ( 16 ) developed constructs harboring dsRNAs and hpRNAs targeting four essential genes of WFT: ACT , TUB , VAT , and SNF . These constructs were transformed into the chloroplast genome or nuclear genome to generate transplastomic and nuclear transgenic plants, respectively.…”

“…The exciting research of Wu et al. ( 16 ) thus provides a promising strategy to control thrips and perhaps, other nonchewing insect pests.…”