The Use of RNA Interference in Enhancing Plant Resistance against Nematodes

Abstract

Plant-parasitic nematodes caused severe yield loss in major crops all over the world. The most wild-used strategies to combat the nematodes is the chamical nematicides, but the overuse of synthetic nematicides threaten sustainable agriculture development. Other strategies, like resistance cultivars and crop rotation, have limited efficiency. Thus, the utilization of molecular biotechnology like RNA interference (RNAi) would be one of the alternative ways to enhance plant resistance against nematodes. RNAi has already used as a tool for gene functional analysis in a wide range of species, especially in the non-parasitic nematode, Caenorhabtidis elegans. In plant-parasitic nematodes, RNAi is induced by soaking nematodes with double-strand RNA(dsRNA) solution mixed with neurostimulants, which is called in vitro RNAi delivery method. In another way around, in planta RNAi method, which is Host-mediated RNAi approach also showed a great success in conferring the resistance against root-knock nematodes. Two main advantages of RNAi-based transgenics are RNAi technology do not produce any functional foreign proteins and it target organisms in a sequence-specific way. Even though the development of RNAi-based transgenics against plant-parasitic nematodes is still in the initial phase, it offers the prospect into a novel nematode control strategy in the future.