The pollen beetle Brassicogethes aeneus is a serious pest of oilseed rape (Brassica napus) in Europe. Management of this pest has grown difficult due to B. aeneus’s development of resistance to pyrethroid insecticides, as well as the pressure to establish control strategies that minimise the impact on nontarget organisms. RNA interference represents a nucleotide sequence-based, and thus potentially species-specific, approach to agricultural pest control. The present study examined the efficacy of targeting the coatomer gene coatomer subunit alpha (αCOP), via both microinjection and dietary exposure to exogenous complementary dsRNA, on αCOP-silencing and subsequent mortality in B. aeneus. Beetles injected with dsRNA targeting αCOP (at 0.14 µg/mg) showed 88% and 100% mortality at 6 and 10 days post-injection, respectively; where by the same time after dietary exposure, 43%–89% mortality was observed in the 3 µg dsRNA/µL treatment, though the effect was concentration-dependent. Thus, the effect was significant for both delivery routes. In working towards RNA-based management of B. aeneus, future studies should include αCOP as a target of interest.

花粉甲虫Brassicogethes aeneus是欧洲油菜的一种严重害虫（甘蓝型油菜）。由于埃尼乌斯虫对拟除虫菊酯类杀虫剂的抗药性增强，以及建立控制策略以尽量减少对非目标生物的影响的压力，因此对该害虫的管理变得越来越困难。RNA干扰代表了基于核苷酸序列的，因此可能具有物种特异性的农业害虫防治方法。本研究检验了通过显微注射和饮食暴露于外源互补dsRNA来靶向涂料基因涂料亚基α（αCOP）对αCOP-沉默和随后死亡率的有效性。乙型肝炎球菌。注射靶向αCOP（0.14 µg / mg）的dsRNA的甲虫在注射后6天和10天分别显示出88％和100％的死亡率。在饮食接触的同一时间，在3 µg dsRNA / µL处理中观察到43％–89％的死亡率，尽管效果是浓度依赖性的。因此，对于两种递送途径，效果都是显着的。在致力于基于RNA的B. aeneus的管理中，未来的研究应将αCOP纳入目标研究对象。