Overexpression of Enhances Resistance against to Soybean Pod Borer () in Soybean.

Soybean [ (L.) Merr.], an essential staple food and oil crop worldwide, boasts abundant vegetable proteins and fats beneficial for both human and animal consumption. However, the soybean pod borer () (SPB) stands as the most destructive soybean insect pest in northeast China and other northeastern Asian regions, leading to significant annual losses in soybean yield and economic burden. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the introduction of a previously tested codon-optimized gene, , into the soybean genome and assess its effect on the SPB infestation by generating and characterizing stable transgenic soybeans overexpressing . The transgenic soybean lines that constitutively overexpressed exhibited a significant reduction in the percentage of damaged seeds, reaching as low as 5% in plants under field conditions. Additionally, feeding transgenic leaves to the larvae of , , and resulted in inhibited larval growth, decreased larval body weight, and lower survival rates compared to larvae fed on wild-type leaves. These findings showed that the transgenic lines maintained their resistance to SPB and other lepidopteran pests, especially the transgenic line KC1. Southern blotting and genome-wide resequencing analysis revealed that T-DNA integration occurred as a single copy between loci 50,868,122 and 50,868,123 of chromosome 10 in the transgenic line KC1. Therefore, the transgenic line KC1, overexpressing high levels of in leaves and seeds, holds strong potential for commercial use in the integrated management of SPB and other lepidopteran pests.