Utilizing chemical agents in pest management in modern agricultural practices has been the predominant approach since the advent of synthetic insecticides. However, insecticide resistance is an emerging issue, as pest populations evolve to survive exposure to chemicals that were once effective in controlling them, underlining the need for advanced and innovative approaches to managing pests. In insects, microRNAs (miRNAs) serve as key regulators of a wide range of biological functions, characterized by their dynamic expression patterns and the ability to target genes. Recent studies are increasingly attributed to the significance of miRNAs in contributing to the evolution of insecticide resistance in numerous insect species. Abundant miRNAs have been discovered in insects using RNA sequencing and transcriptome analysis and are known to play vital roles in regulation at both the transcriptional and post-transcriptional levels. Globally, there is growing research interest in the characterization and application of miRNAs, especially for their potential role in managing insecticide resistance. This review focuses on how miRNAs contribute to regulating insecticide resistance across various insect species. Furthermore, we discuss the gain and loss of functions of miRNAs and the techniques for delivering miRNAs into the insect system. The review emphasizes the application of miRNA-based strategies to studying their role in diminishing insecticide resistance, offering a more efficient and lasting approach to insect management.

Chlorantraniliprole 18.5 SC has been found to be significantly superior to all other treatments in controlling Maruca vitrata. At 30 g a.i. ha⁻¹, it recorded significantly low pest infestation of 9.55 webs per plant after 10 d of the second spray as compared to 22.55 webs per plant in the untreated control. Significantly low pod damage (7.22%), high seed yield (1278 kg ha⁻¹) and maximum net monetary return over control (Rs. 22, 020 ha⁻¹) were recorded. The next in order were indoxacarb 14.5 SC @ 73 g a.i. ha⁻¹ and flubendamide 480 SC @ 48 g a.i. ha⁻¹. All the insecticidal treatments were safe to the natural enemies at the respective dosages in comparison with the untreated control.

Maruca vitrata is one of the primary biotic constraints for pigeon pea production in India. The present study assessed the genetic variation and population structure of M. vitrata from diverse agro-ecologies in India using the mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase I gene. A low number of segregating sites (10), haplotypes (13), nucleotide diversity (0.00136), and overall mean genetic distance (0.0013) were observed among the populations. The negative values of the neutrality tests and unimodal mismatch distribution supported its demographic expansion in the country. The analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA) revealed that the variation among populations or groups was only 13.91%, and the geographical distance did not significantly contribute to the genetic differentiation (R² = 0.0024, p = 0.280). The clustering of haplotypes was also independent of the geographical location. Overall, our results suggest the existence of low genetic variation and high gene flow among populations of M. vitrata in India.

Maruca vitrata (Fabricius) is an invasive insect pest capable of causing enormous economic losses to a broad spectrum of leguminous crops. Microsatellites are valuable molecular markers for population genetic studies; however, an inadequate number of M. vitrata microsatellite loci are available to carry out population association studies. Thus, we utilized this insect’s public domain databases for mining expressed sequence tags (EST)-derived microsatellite markers. In total, 234 microsatellite markers were identified from 10053 unigenes. We discovered that trinucleotide repeats were the most predominant microsatellite motifs (61.53%), followed by dinucleotide repeats (23.50%) and tetranucleotide repeats (14.95%). Based on the analysis, twenty-five markers were selected for validation in M. vitrata populations collected from various regions of India. The number of alleles (Na), observed heterozygosity (Ho), and expected heterozygosity (He) ranged from 2 to 5; 0.00 to 0.80; and 0.10 to 0.69, respectively. The polymorphic loci showed polymorphism information content (PIC), ranging from 0.09 to 0.72. Based on the genetic distance matrix, the unrooted neighbor-joining dendrogram differentiated the selected populations into two discrete groups. The SSR markers developed and validated in this study will be helpful in population-level investigations of M. vitrata to understand the gene flow, demography, dispersal patterns, biotype differentiation, and host dynamics.