Postdoc Fellow University of California Riverside Riverside, California
Body of Abstract: Cassava is an important source of calories and staple crop in Latino America, Africa, and Asia. The phloem-feeding whitefly-species Aleurotrachelus socialis reduces root-yields and transmits deadly viruses that devastate cassava in Latino America. Peruvian-cassava genotypes are promising sources of resistance to A. socialis as they sustain low whitefly population levels and delay their development. We conducted a comparative transcriptomic analysis of five Peruvian-cassava genotypes over the course of an A. socialis-infestation to characterize the molecular mechanisms associated with resistance to this pest. Here, we report preliminary results from the comparison between resistant-cassava, PER317, and susceptible and resistant controls at 1, 7, 14, and 22 d post infestation (dpi) after accounting for expression levels before infestation. The number of up-regulated and down-regulated interaction DEGs (iDEGs) increased over the course of infestation and reached their highest number at 22 dpi when the second- and third-instar nymphs were feeding. Overall, A. socialis feeding impacted, towards up-regulation, genes involved in the synthesis of proanthocyanidins and other genes upstream of this biosynthesis pathway.