Legumes: Potential source of entomotoxic proteins-a review

Abstract

To meet the food demand of the ever-expanding world population there is a need for research and development for protecting crops against insect pests and pathogens. The way could be exploring the plant’s own defense mechanism by manipulating the expression of their endogenous defense proteins or introducing an insect control gene derived from another plants. The wild and resistant gene pools are the potential source of beneficial gene that offers considerable resistance to the insect pests. Insecticidal proteins viz., lectins, α-amylase inhibitor, urease, protease inhibitor, arcelins and cyclotides present in the seeds of pulses, especially in wild and resistance germplasms have been suggested to play a major role in insect resistance which are considered as most promising weapons that confer resistance against insects and which will be eco-friendly alternative to synthetic pesticides. Thus, it is very important to characterize these proteins and their encoding genes so that they can be used as viable means of producing pest resistant transgenic crops. This review deals with the biochemical features and mechanism of action of legume insecticidal proteins involved in defense mechanism against insect pests.