CRISPR/Cas9 for Insect Pests Management: A Comprehensive Review of Advances and Applications

Insect pests impose a serious threat to agricultural productivity. Initially, for pest management, several breeding approaches were applied which have now been gradually replaced by genome editing (GE) strategies as they are more efficient and less laborious. CRISPR/Cas9 (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeat/CRISPR-associated system) was discovered as an adaptive immune system of bacteria and with the scientific advancements, it has been improvised into a revolutionary genome editing technique. Due to its specificity and easy handling, CRISPR/Cas9-based genome editing has been applied to a wide range of organisms for various research purposes. For pest control, diverse approaches have been applied utilizing CRISPR/Cas9-like systems, thereby making the pests susceptible to various insecticides, compromising the reproductive fitness of the pest, hindering the metamorphosis of the pest, and there have been many other benefits. This article reviews the efficiency of CRISPR/Cas9 and proposes potential research ideas for CRISPR/Cas9-based integrated pest management. CRISPR/Cas9 technology has been successfully applied to several insect pest species. However, there is no review available which thoroughly summarizes the application of the technique in insect genome editing for pest control. Further, authors have highlighted the advancements in CRISPR/Cas9 research and have discussed its future possibilities in pest management.