{"id":222384,"date":"2025-09-24T03:43:23","date_gmt":"2025-09-24T08:43:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/09\/pest-resistance-threatens-corn-industrys-newest-biotech-defense-study-warns"},"modified":"2025-09-24T03:43:23","modified_gmt":"2025-09-24T08:43:23","slug":"pest-resistance-threatens-corn-industrys-newest-biotech-defense-study-warns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/09\/pest-resistance-threatens-corn-industrys-newest-biotech-defense-study-warns","title":{"rendered":"Pest resistance threatens corn industry\u2019s newest biotech defense, study warns"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/pest-resistance-threatens-corn-industrys-newest-biotech-defense-study-warns.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Corn rootworms, pests responsible for billions of dollars in yearly crop losses, are evolving resistance that weakens even the latest biotechnology controls, according to a new <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pnas.org\/doi\/10.1073\/pnas.2518683122\" target=\"_blank\">study<\/a> published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.<\/p>\n<p>Drawing on decades of data across multiple states, University of Arizona entomologists found that field-evolved <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/resistance\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">resistance<\/a> to Bacillus thuringiensis, or Bt, is undermining the effectiveness of corn that targets rootworms with the combination of Bt and RNA interference, or RNAi, a new biotech control that turns the rootworms\u2019 own genetic instructions against them.<\/p>\n<p>The research team analyzed extensive field data collected over the past two decades in 12 previous studies, including millions of rootworms evaluated across the Corn Belt, which extends from western Ohio to eastern Nebraska and northeastern Kansas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Corn rootworms, pests responsible for billions of dollars in yearly crop losses, are evolving resistance that weakens even the latest biotechnology controls, according to a new study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Drawing on decades of data across multiple states, University of Arizona entomologists found that field-evolved resistance to [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,412],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-222384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-genetics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222384"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222384\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}