Bean bug, Riptortus pedestris is an agriculturally serious pest in East Asian countries, reducing the value of crop quality and loss of income in agribusiness. Chemical pesticides have contributed to the management of the pest, but nowadays insect resistance limits the use of chemical pesticides, thus alternatively new pesticides with different mode of actions such as entomopathogenic fungi are considered. Beauveria bassiana and Metarhizium anisopliae JEF isolates were collected, identified and assayed against bean bugs in laboratory conditions. Some isolates showed >80% virulence by spray and contact-exposure methods. Supernatant showed different level of enzyme activity including chitinase, Pr1 protease and lipase. The Agrobacterium tumefaciens-mediated transformation generated random transformants and some mutants had reduced virulence. TAIL-PCR of the random transformants revealed virulence-related genes. This work can be a strong platform for the functional genetics of bean bug-pathogenic B. bassiana.

• Sihyeon Kim(Department of Agricultural Biology, Chonbuk National University)
• Se Jin Lee(Department of Agricultural Biology, Chonbuk National University)
• Mi Rong Lee(Department of Agricultural Biology, Chonbuk National University)
• Min Ho Song(Department of Agricultural Biology, Chonbuk National University)
• Yi-Ting Yang(Department of Agricultural Biology, Chonbuk National University)
• Jae Su Kim(Department of Agricultural Biology, Chonbuk National University)