Understanding the Science of Gene Drive and the Potential for an Improved Crop Pest Control System in Nigeria
|
|
A. Isah and R. S. M. Gidado,
OFAB Nigeria,
2020.
What if Nigeria uses Gene drive to revamp her food crop industry? The plant sucking insects in the order Hemiptera is one of the most devastating insects in the Nigeria’s farm. The negative effects of these destructive crop pest results from the stress and damage caused by feeding in addition to the plant pathogens they transmit while probing plant tissue. The vector of the bacterium Candidatus Liberibacter asiaticus which causes citrus greening disease, Diaphorina citri, Nilaparvata lugens, a notorious pest of rice that has the ability to transmit viruses and Bemisia tabaci, a species of whitefly known to feed on over 500 host plants all belong to the order Hemiptera. These devastating insect pests have been known to reduce the crop yield of Nigerian farmers by more than 50%. Insect pests population suppression using Cas9-mediated gene drive technology can provide a cost-effective, accurate and simple method for control. Several studies have shown that the Cas9-mediated gene drive technology is cheaper and will be easily affordable by the efficient Nigerian scientists to explore. The application of the gene drive technologies have many more controls over several other devastating insects in Nigeria and may be very necessary to adopt it to rescue our ailing food crop industry from the attack by destructive insect pest of crops. More related to this: Groups warn against release of genetically-engineered mosquitoes in Nigeria CSOs raise alarm over genetically-engineered mosquitoes in Nigeria Malaria: Over 75 CSOs raise alarm over plans to release nautically engineered mosquitoes
|
