Abstract
Baculovirus-based insecticides are currently being used worldwide, and new products are in development in many countries. The most dramatic examples of successful baculovirus insecticides are found in soybean in Brazil and cotton in China. Production of baculoviruses is generally done in larvae of a convenient host species, and the level of sophistication varies tremendously between field-collection of infected insects at the one extreme and automated mass manufacturing at the other. Currently, only products with wild type baculoviruses as active ingredients are commercially available. Baculoviruses encoding insecticidal proteins are considered attractive, especially for crops with little tolerance to feeding damage, where speed-of-kill is an important characteristic. Successful field tests with such recombinant baculoviruses have been done in the past, and more tests are ongoing. However, low-cost production of recombinant baculovirus in larvae poses specific problems, due to the short survival time of the production host.
In this chapter, benchtop-scale production of two typical baculoviruses is described. First, we describe the production of wild type Helicoverpa zea nucleopolyhedrovirus in bollworm (H. zea) larvae. H. zea larvae are very aggressive and need to be reared in isolation from each other. Second, we describe the production of a recombinant Autographa californica multiple nucleopolyhedrovirus in the non-cannibalistic cabbage looper, Trichoplusia ni. The recombinant baculovirus encodes the insect-specific scorpion toxin LqhIT2. The tetracycline transactivator system enables the production of wild-type quantity and quality product while toxin expression is repressed since normal toxin production would result in premature death of the production host that would limit progeny virus production.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Moscardi F (1999) Assessment of the application of baculoviruses for control of lepidoptera. Annu Rev Entomol 44:257–289
Moscardi F, de Souza ML, de Castro MEB et al (2011) Baculovirus pesticides: present state and future perspectives. In: Ahmad I, Ahmad F, Pichtel J (eds) Microbes and microbial technology. Springer, New York, pp 415–445
Mason PG, Huber JT (eds) (2001) Biological control programmes in Canada 1981–2000. CABI Publishing, New York, NY
McClintock JT, van Beek NAM, Kough JL et al (1999) Regulatory aspects of biological control agents and products derived by biotechnology. In: Rechcigl JE, Rechcigl NA (eds) Biological and biotechnological control of insect pests. CRC, Boca Raton, FL, pp 317–359
Davis FM, Malone S, Oswalt TG et al (1990) Medium-sized lepidopterous rearing system using multicellular rearing trays. J Econ Entomol 83:1535–1540
van Beek NAM, Hughes PR (1998) The response time of insect larvae infected with recombinant baculoviruses. J Invertebr Pathol 72:338–347
Vanderzant ES, Richardson CD, Fort SW Jr (1962) Rearing the bollworm on artificial diet. J Econ Entomol 55:140
Perkins WD, Jones RL, Sparks AN et al (1973) Artificial diets for mass rearing the corn earworm (Heliothis zea). Production research report no. 154, U. S. Dept. of Agriculture
Joyner K, Gould F (1985) Developmental consequences of cannibalism in Heliothis zea (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae). Ann Entomol Soc Am 78:24–28
Eitan M, Fowler E, Herrman R et al (1990) A scorpion venom neurotoxin paralytic to insects that affects sodium current inactivation purification primary structure, and mode of action. Biochemistry 29:5941–5947
Zilverberg N, Zlotkin E, Gurevitz M (1992) Molecular analysis of cDNA and the transcript encoding the depressant insect-selective neurotoxin of the scorpion Leiurus quinquestriatus hebraeus. Insect Biochem Mol Biol 22:199–203
van Beek N, Lu A, Presnail J et al (2002) Effect of signal sequence and promoter on the speed of action of a genetically modified Autographa californica nucleopolyhedrovirus expressing the scorpion toxin LqhIT2. Biol Control 27:53–64
Gossen M, Freundlieb S, Bender G et al (1995) Transcriptional activation by tetracycline in mammalian cells. Science 268:1766–1769
McCutchen BF (2000) Recombinant baculovirus insecticides. US Patent 6,096,304
Roach SH, Thomas WM (1989) Development of Heliothis zea (Boddie) (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) on Carolina geranium and artificial diet at various temperatures. J Entomol Sci 24:588–593
van Beek NAM, Hughes PR, Wood HA (2000) Effects of incubation temperature on the dose survival time relationship of Trichoplusia ni larvae infected with Autographa californica nucleopolyhedrovirus. J Invertebr Pathol 75:185–190
Acknowledgements
We thank Dr. Ian Smith (Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Japan) for reviewing the manuscript. We thank Drs. Andy Cherry, Michael Dimock, David Grzywacz, Flavio Moscardi, Madoka Nakai, Thi Tu Cuc Nguyen, Philip Sridhar, Xulian Sun, and Kees van Frankenhuyzen for providing information about baculovirus production and commercialization in various countries in the world.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC
About this protocol
Cite this protocol
van Beek, N., Davis, D.C. (2016). Baculovirus Insecticide Production in Insect Larvae. In: Murhammer, D. (eds) Baculovirus and Insect Cell Expression Protocols. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 1350. Humana Press, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-3043-2_20
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-3043-2_20
Publisher Name: Humana Press, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4939-3042-5
Online ISBN: 978-1-4939-3043-2
eBook Packages: Springer Protocols