Summary
Agriculture is facing constant pressure to increase food production to fulfill human population demands. This has been accomplished by the use of intensive agricultural techniques. The increase of global temperatures together with intensive techniques like worldwide movements of plant material, use of monocultures, and abuse on insecticides have modified the trophic chains in agricultural systems. As a consequence, there is an unprecedented increase in emergent plant viral diseases in the last decades. Most of these viruses require an insect vector for their transmission. Unfortunately, some vector insects have been favored by intensive agriculture. Indeed, the whitefly Bemisia tabaci has become a worldwide supervector and is the cause of the global emergence of begomoviruses and criniviruses. This whitefly has developed resistance to many insecticides and developing new control techniques is a must. Recently, a population modification strategy has been applied to mosquitoes, displacing natural populations and replacing them with virus-resistant ones that are no longer able to transmit human diseases. This success has been achieved using Wolbachia, a bacterial symbiont present in many insects, that can confer virus-resistance phenotypes to its host. Interestingly, B. tabaci presents a rich bacterial symbiotic community, including Wolbachia, that can be naturally manipulated through hybridization. This offers the unique opportunity to unravel the multitrophic interactions that occur between B. tabaci, its symbionts, the vectored virus, and the plant. Using integrative frameworks to study the insect and the plant physiology, the virus transmission, the symbionts dynamics, and the cross-talks between them (their transcriptomes) can lead to the discovery of new symbiotic virus-resistant phenotypes in B. tabaci. If this is achieved, it will be a keystone to develop further population modification strategies to spread symbionts conferred virus-resistances.
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More information & hyperlinks
| Web resources: | https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/885583 |
| Start date: | 01-02-2021 |
| End date: | 31-01-2023 |
| Total budget - Public funding: | 196 707,84 Euro - 196 707,00 Euro |
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Original description
Agriculture is facing constant pressure to increase food production to fulfill human population demands. This has been accomplished by the use of intensive agricultural techniques. The increase of global temperatures together with intensive techniques like worldwide movements of plant material, use of monocultures, and abuse on insecticides have modified the trophic chains in agricultural systems. As a consequence, there is an unprecedented increase in emergent plant viral diseases in the last decades. Most of these viruses require an insect vector for their transmission. Unfortunately, some vector insects have been favored by intensive agriculture. Indeed, the whitefly Bemisia tabaci has become a worldwide supervector and is the cause of the global emergence of begomoviruses and criniviruses. This whitefly has developed resistance to many insecticides and developing new control techniques is a must. Recently, a population modification strategy has been applied to mosquitoes, displacing natural populations and replacing them with virus-resistant ones that are no longer able to transmit human diseases. This success has been achieved using Wolbachia, a bacterial symbiont present in many insects, that can confer virus-resistance phenotypes to its host. Interestingly, B. tabaci presents a rich bacterial symbiotic community, including Wolbachia, that can be naturally manipulated through hybridization. This offers the unique opportunity to unravel the multitrophic interactions that occur between B. tabaci, its symbionts, the vectored virus, and the plant. Using integrative frameworks to study the insect and the plant physiology, the virus transmission, the symbionts dynamics, and the cross-talks between them (their transcriptomes) can lead to the discovery of new symbiotic virus-resistant phenotypes in B. tabaci. If this is achieved, it will be a keystone to develop further population modification strategies to spread symbionts conferred virus-resistances.Status
CLOSEDCall topic
MSCA-IF-2019Update Date
28-04-2024
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