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Scientists are giving soybeans a genetic boost to help fight off pesky Chinese soybean aphids.
These pests were first detected in Wisconsin in 2000, and have since spread across the Midwest and into the South, causing millions of dollars of crop damage. Currently farmers are fighting back with expensive insecticide sprays.
Now, USDA Agricultural Research Service scientist Glen Hartman has discovered Rag1, a gene that could give soybean plants the ability to resist the exotic aphid.
The sap-sucking pest causes a variety of harm to the plant, including stunted growth, disfigured leaves, poor pod formation, and eventual death. But when scientists let wingless females and their nymph offspring go after the resistant beans' leaves, neither form of the pest survived long.
About 94 to 100 percent of the females died within 10 days - compared to 17 percent on a nonresistant plant, Hartman reports, adding that nymphs suffered a similar fate.
These new, high-yielding, Rag1-expressing plants could be available by 2008. Until then, scientists will continue searching for other resistance genes.
This work is detailed in the November 2005 issue of Agricultural Research magazine.
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Credit: Jim Kalsich / USDA
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