Written by Tom Allen-Stevens
A pioneering new approach to tackling viruses in sugar beet, which could herald a major breakthrough for all plant viruses, has been awarded grant funding. Tom Allen-Stevens reports. A leading John Innes Centre researcher and colleagues have been awarded European funding to develop innovative molecular solutions to combat beet yellows virus (BYV). Dr Yiliang Ding received the European Research Council Proof of Concept grant worth £150,000 to carry forward the RNA-based approach. It’s hoped this could be used to help tackle the virus that can cause yield losses of over 50% and poses a significant threat to the European sugar beet industry, worth €3.6bn. Growers currently have few alternative measures to tackle the problem, following the withdrawal of neonicotinoid pesticides from the crop across the EU in 2018. The ultra-RNA approach developed by Yiliang’s group captures the shape of the viral RNAs inside plants and uses this knowledge to design specific artificial small interfering RNAs to target and degrade the virus. “We are applying our recent fundamental discoveries into the specific type of RNAs – viral RNAs,” says Yiliang. “RNA science is one that is just emerging, but it is gathering momentum and there’s a lot of expertise here at…
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