Combined Effect of Two Transgenes by Host Delivered RNAi against Meloidogyne incognita and its Parasitic Potential

Abstract

In the current situation, the most serious threat to agriculture is root-knot nematodes (RKNs), which cause both direct and indirect damage. RKNs (Meloidogyne incognita) are obligatory sedentary plant endoparasites with a highly complicated parasitism strategy. Plant resistance development is a promising approach to dealing with the RKN problem. RNA interference (RNAi) is a revolutionary way for engineering plants to create resistance against plant parasites and pathogens. Splicing factor and integrase are two housekeeping genes in Meloidogyne incognita which were targeted through RNAi for silencing. The target organism (M. incognita) was subjected to host-induced gene silencing (HIGs) of these two genes at the same time by crossing parents that had already been altered to express the dsRNA of each gene independently. Bioassay tests were performed on the progeny that expressed dsRNA for both genes. The findings revealed a significant reduction in the pathogenic and reproductive capability of M. incognita. When compared to untransformed occurrences, the number of galls, females, and egg masses were reduced by 71.81-74.39, 76.73-78.76, and 67.13-70.27 per cent, respectively. The results demonstrated that combinatorial gene silencing had a greater effect than single-gene silencing or no gene silencing at all.