Grants and Contracts Details
Description
We propose to establish new tools for integrated pest management of invasive insects and
diseases of forest trees. Invasive diseases and insect pests impact a substantial number of tree
species, causing extensive mortality and altering forest composition and structure nationally and
globally. Innovative, novel management approaches are needed that can be rapidly developed for
effective treatments against the diverse current and future forest diseases and insect pests. One
such approach, RNA interference (RNAi), is based on manipulating the invaders’ metabolism
through introduction of double stranded RNA (dsRNA) specific to the invader. This approach
takes advantage of the naturally occurring cellular defense system present in most plants, insects
and fungi to monitor and suppress viral infections, by targeting double stranded viral RNA for
cleavage, thus suppressing viral infection. These same mechanisms have been repurposed by
application of dsRNA to plants that silence pest species-specific genes essential for the growth
and reproduction of the targeted invasive pest. Unlike traditional pesticides, RNAi can be rapidly
developed by using the genome sequence of the targeted pest species to design species-specific
dsRNAs. RNAi has been shown to be effective against a variety of fungal pathogens and insect
pests in agriculture and has recently been shown to be applicable in forest trees by members of
our team. We propose to develop and test RNAi-based suppression of six important test cases in
forest trees: 1) chestnut blight, 2) Dutch elm disease, 3) butternut canker, 4) laurel wilt, 5)
emerald ash borer and related invasive wood borers, and 6) invasive adelgid species, including
the hemlock and balsam woolly adelgids. Our approach uses exogenously applied dsRNAs and is
not a genetically modified organism-based approach.
The portion of this larger project that we will be leading here includes development of RNAi
tools and techniques for tree pathogens (insects will be addressed by a different group at UK in a
separate agreement), outreach, and better understanding public opinion about RNAi.
Status | Active |
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Effective start/end date | 8/27/24 → 12/31/27 |
Funding
- Forest Service: $345,000.00
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