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20 October 2020 Comparison of in Vitro and in Planta Toxicity of Vip3A for Lepidopteran Herbivores
Muhammad Hassaan Khan, Georg Jander, Zahid Mukhtar, Muhammad Arshad, Muhammad Sarwar, Shaheen Asad
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Abstract

Agricultural pest infestation is as old as domestication of food crops and contributes a major share to the cost of crop production. In a transgenic pest control approach, plant production of Vip3A, an insecticidal protein from Bacillus thuringiensis, is effective against lepidopteran pests. A synthetic Vip3A gene was evaluated for efficacy against Spodoptera litura Fabricius (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae; cotton leafworm), Spodoptera exigua Hübner (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae; beet armyworm), Spodoptera frugiperda Smith (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae; fall armyworm), Helicoverpa armigera Hübner (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae; cotton bollworm), Helicoverpa zea Boddie (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae; corn earworm), Heliothis virescens Fabricius (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae; tobacco budworm), and Manduca sexta L. (Lepidoptera: Sphingidae; tobacco hornworm) in tobacco. In artificial diet assays, the concentration required to achieve 50% mortality was highest for H. zea followed by H. virescens > S. exigua > H. armigera > M. sexta > S. frugiperda > S. litura. By contrast, in bioassays with detached leaves from Vip3A transgenic tobacco, the time until 50% lethality was M. sexta > H. virescens > S. litura > H. zea > H. armigera > S. exigua. There was no significant correlation between the artificial diet and transgenic plant bioassay results. Notably, the two insect species that are best-adapted for growth on tobacco, M. sexta and H. virescens, showed the greatest time to 50% mortality on Vip3A-transgenic tobacco. Together, our results suggest that artificial diet assays may be a poor predictor of Vip3A efficacy in transgenic plants, lepidopteran species vary in their sensitivity to Vip3A in diet-dependent manner, and host plant adaptation of the targeted herbivores should be considered when designing transgenic plants for pest control.

© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Entomological Society of America. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.
Muhammad Hassaan Khan, Georg Jander, Zahid Mukhtar, Muhammad Arshad, Muhammad Sarwar, and Shaheen Asad "Comparison of in Vitro and in Planta Toxicity of Vip3A for Lepidopteran Herbivores," Journal of Economic Entomology 113(6), 2959-2971, (20 October 2020). https://doi.org/10.1093/jee/toaa211
Received: 28 October 2019; Accepted: 13 August 2020; Published: 20 October 2020
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KEYWORDS
bioassays
insect susceptibility
Lepidoptera
transformation
Vip3A
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