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Optimizing pyramided transgenic Bt crops for sustainable pest management

Nature Biotechnology volume 33, pages 161–168 (2015)Cite this article

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Abstract

Transgenic crop pyramids producing two or more Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) toxins that kill the same insect pest have been widely used to delay evolution of pest resistance. To assess the potential of pyramids to achieve this goal, we analyze data from 38 studies that report effects of ten Bt toxins used in transgenic crops against 15 insect pests. We find that compared with optimal low levels of insect survival, survival on currently used pyramids is often higher for both susceptible insects and insects resistant to one of the toxins in the pyramid. Furthermore, we find that cross-resistance and antagonism between toxins used in pyramids are common, and that these problems are associated with the similarity of the amino acid sequences of domains II and III of the toxins, respectively. This analysis should assist in future pyramid design and the development of sustainable resistance management strategies.

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Figure 1: Survival of susceptible pests on pyramids relative to their survival on non-Bt crop counterparts.
Figure 2: Negative association between relative proportion survival of susceptible insects on pyramids and redundant killing factor (RKF) (simple linear regression, slope = −0.61, intercept = 1.49, R2 = 35%, d.f. = 8, P = 0.036).
Figure 3: Structure of Cry1Aa, Cry2Aa, Cry3Aa and Cry3Bb as resolved by X-ray crystallography.
Figure 4: Association between amino acid sequence similarity of domain III between toxins in pyramids and index of multiplicative survival (IMS) for susceptible insects (simple linear regression, slope = 0.015, R2 = 51%, d.f. = 15, P = 0.0013).
Figure 5: Association between amino acid sequence similarity of domain II and cross-resistance ratio (CRR) (data from Supplementary Table 2).

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Acknowledgements

We thank J. Rick for help with searching the literature for cross-resistance data and F. Huang for providing data from one of his publications. This study was supported by US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Biotechnology Risk Assessment Grant Award 2011-33522-30729.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Entomology, The University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, USA

    Yves Carrière & Bruce E Tabashnik

  2. School of Life Sciences, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK

    Neil Crickmore

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  1. Yves Carrière
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Contributions

Y.C. analyzed the data. Y.C., N.C. and B.E.T. wrote the paper.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yves Carrière.

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Competing interests

Y.C. has received funding from Pioneer, but Pioneer did not provide funding for this work. B.E.T. is coauthor of a patent on modified Bt toxins, “Suppression of Resistance in Insects to Bacillus thuringiensis Cry Toxins, Using Toxins that do not Require the Cadherin Receptor” (patent numbers: CA2690188A1, CN101730712A, EP2184293A2,EP2184293A4, EP2184293B1, WO2008150150A2, WO2008150150A3). Pioneer, Dow AgroSciences, Monsanto and Bayer CropScience did not provide funding to support this work, but may be affected financially by publication of this paper and have funded other work by B.E.T. N.C. does not declare any competing financial interests.

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Carrière, Y., Crickmore, N. & Tabashnik, B. Optimizing pyramided transgenic Bt crops for sustainable pest management. Nat Biotechnol 33, 161–168 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt.3099

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