Revista de fisiología y patología vegetal

RNAi: A Promising Approach to Develop Transgenic Plants Against Geminiviruses and Insects

Abhinav Kumar and Neera Bhalla Sarin

RNAi: A Promising Approach to Develop Transgenic Plants Against Geminiviruses and Insects

Viruses, especially geminiviruses and insects infect a wide range of economically important crops across the globe. To reduce the losses caused by them, scientists have adopted several genetic engineering methods to develop resistant plants. Among them, RNA silencing based resistance has proven to be a reliable approach. In this review, we focus on RNAi mediated gene silencing approaches against this class of virus and insects. RNA silencing is a complex and conserved defence mechanism utilized by plants and other eukaryotes to protect themselves from aberrant nucleic acids. The use of RNAi provides an environmental friendly approach to generate plants resistant to viruses and insects, which is not possible otherwise.