Wheat Rust Diseases

Abstract

Virus-induced gene silencing (VIGS) is a widely used reverse genetics tool to knock down genes in plants transiently without transformation. The assay has been successfully used to downregulate the transcript abundance of a target gene at almost any plant developmental stages in any tissues. Here, we describe the VIGS assay using a barley stripe mosaic virus (BSMV) for functional genomics analysis in wheat with the focus on genes involved in rust resistance.