Abstract
There is an urgent need to enhance agricultural production as well as productivity to meet the food demand of the growing population, estimated to be 10 billion by 2050, using a holistic and sustainable approach. The daily food sources for almost three-fourth of the global population, cereals and millets, are prone to several biotic factors and abiotic pressures. In particular, cereals and millet cultivation are limited by the polyphagous pink stem borer, Sesamia inferens Walker (Lepidoptera:Noctuidae) gaining national importance, since its larvae and pupae are concealed within the stem, none of the management measures have been found effective in controlling the menace. However, host plant resistance (HPR) is a reasonable and ecologically safe method wherein resistance mechanisms of crops could lower the stem borer infestation. The foremost challenge in understanding the mechanism would be to detecting the genes of interest in the crop using novel biotechnological approaches. The fundamental criterion for developing insect-resistant lines relies on recognizing the mechanism of plant resistance. The entire life cycle of this group of borers is completed or hidden within the stem, posing a hurdle in their management. Thus, molecular markers and Quantitative Trait Locus (QTL) mapping offer a more efficient approach to entomologists and plant breeders wherein they can work with traits like QTLs for stem borer resistance. In this review, an attempt has been made to provide an extensive summary of the host range and crop losses due to this borer, besides its taxonomic position, geographic distribution, bionomics, genetics of resistance, and molecular perspectives.
Highlights
Plants with resistance coexisted with vulnerable insects for several decades until the domestication era
S.maize inferens was successfully utilizedtoin to understand the inheritance of resistance to Mediterranean corn borer“The (MCB)
The results showed that small heat shock proteins (sHSPs) genes play an imperative role in the physiology of S. inferens and could be used in pest management programs after the exploitation of sHSPs genes [98]
Summary
Plants with resistance coexisted with vulnerable insects for several decades until the domestication era. One of the chief producers of millets throughout the world is India [5], with 6–19 percent losses attributed to insect-pests [6]. Among all the insect-pests, stem borers are the most destructive assemblages infesting the millets [7,8,9,10]. Climatic change with modern crop cultivation practices has hustled S. inferens to the status of major pests of millets in India [16]. DNA markers and continuous improvement in molecular assays resulted in a successful molecular marker-assisted breeding (MAB) [17] program. Improving the defense mechanism against insects and exploration of resistance genes is the only way to manage the stem borers using transgenic approaches [19]. The development of stem borer resistant genotypes using molecular approaches to increase agricultural production is gaining importance. The host plant resistance mechanisms and molecular features of S. inferens like the mitochondrial genome, molecular categorization of heat shock proteins and Quantitative Real-Time PCR Analysis are summarized, which could help the researchers in planning future research
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