Insect protection has been one of most relevant demands from growers around the globe leading to the development of new Crop Protection products and genetically modified crops. The high risk of resistance evolution to the existing technologies poses an urgent need of developing new modes of action and creating alternative tactics of insect control. Additionally, there is an increasing demand for solutions with less or no impact to the environment. To meet this demand, a large amount of investment has been applied to new technologies for insect control. Those technologies include genetically modified crops expressing new insecticidal proteins and RNAi, breeding efforts to bring native traits conferring some level of natural tolerance, pheromones causing mating disruption, insects carrying self-limiting genes and the well-known biological control products. A great example of such advancement is the genetically modified corn expressing RNAi. RNAi as an insect control alternative has increased the commercial interest since several studies have showed ingested dsRNA can lead to the effective control of target insect. Among the key pests in agriculture, some insect classes such as Coleoptera have shown higher susceptibility to RNAi. In case of Diabrotica virgifera, the mechanism of action was clearly demonstrated, including the dsRNA ingestion, suppression of the targeted mRNA and protein, spreading to other insect tissues, growth inhibition and insect mortality. It is expected that in the short term the emerging insect control technologies will become a reality in several crops and countries, contributing to more sustainable Integrated Pest Management programs.
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