This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Researchers at the University of Maryland and their collaborators have cloned a gene that makes wheat resistant to feeding by Hessian fly larvae and demonstrated its direct interaction with a protein produced by the insect. The research breaks through a longstanding barrier to understanding and engineering pest resistance in wheat.
It is described in a research paper published Aug. 14, 2026, in the journal Science Advances. "This is very exciting for us, because it is the first time anyone has been able to clone pest resistance genes in wheat and demonstrate the direct interaction between the gene and the specific insect pest protein it reacts with," said Nidhi Rawat, an associate professor of plant science at UMD and a co-author of the paper. Hessian flies are tiny, mosquito-like insects that cause hundreds of millions of dollars in damage to cereal crops like wheat, barley and rye around the world and account for roughly a 5% reduction in U.S. wheat yield annually.
Unlike other pests that eat crops outright, Hessian fly larvae secrete chemicals through their saliva into plant cells. These chemicals transform the cells into an abnormal growth that feeds the larva while robbing the plant of nutrients. Wheat has several genes that help the plant defend against the chemicals in Hessian fly larval saliva, but in 50 years of trying, scientists had not been able to demonstrate how those genes interact with the proteins in larval saliva and trigger an immune response.
That means they have not been able to understand how resistance against Hessian flies works. To observe the reactions of specific genes and proteins, scientists must isolate the target gene, often cloning it in another organism, like yeast or bacteria, that rapidly multiplies and produces millions of identical copies of the gene. But the wheat genome is large and complex, with many repeated DNA sequences, which has made identifying and cloning individual resistance genes nearly impossible.
Rawat and her colleagues developed new genomic tools to pinpoint the location of the Hessian fly resistance gene H13 and successfully grow wheat cultures with overexpression of the gene in the laboratory. When H13 detects a specific protein in larval saliva, the gene tells nearby cells to die off and surrounding cells to reinforce their walls, making them harder to penetrate. H13 also causes the wheat cells to produce molecules that are toxic to the larvae.
This action cuts off access to the nutritious fluids and tissues in a plant, starving and poisoning the larvae. After isolating the gene and creating wheat cultures with elevated H13 expression, Rawat and the research team were able to demonstrate the activation of H13 by a specific protein in larval saliva, validating the molecular mechanism that enables wheat to resist Hessian fly attacks. Fifty years after the discovery of genetic resistance to Hessian fly, researchers can now begin to develop a gene-based solution for a persistent agricultural pest that affects wheat growers on a global scale.
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