Wheat with immunity to Barley Yellow Dwarf Virus
Wheat plants inoculated
with barley yellow dwarf virus. The plants on the left contain
the hairpin against the virus and therefore are immune, where as
the wild type plants on the right are severely stunted by the virus
infection.
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Barley Yellow Dwarf Virus (BYDV) is a serious virus disease of cereals costing producers in Australia and elsewhere, millions of dollars a year in lost production.
HairpinRNAi has been used by CSIRO to immunise barley against the virus. The trait provides immunity in glasshouse and field trials, with plants exhibiting no symptoms of virus disease and showing no evidence of virus replication in infected plants.
A hairpinRNAi construct targeting both BYDV and the closely related virus Cereal Yellow Dwarf Virus has been used to make transgenic wheat and barley. To be environmentally friendly, hairpinRNAi construct uses only small and incomplete parts of the viral genes.