Fig. 3

Effects of feeding bacteria expressing dsRNA-ECR (a) and dsRNA-RPL19 (b) on fruit fly (Bactrocera dorsalis). Mortality of maggots, pupae, and adult fruit flies were monitored after feeding artificial diet containing bacteria at different concentration at 200 μl of 200× (1 × 10⁸ cells), 350 μl of 200× (1.75 × 10⁸ cells), and 700 μl of 200× (3.5 × 10⁸ cells) expressing dsRNA-ECR and dsRNA-RPL19 to maggots and data were collected up to 15 days of feeding. The control group was fed with artificial diet with the highest amount (700 μl) of bacteria expressing pL4440 plasmid without any gene fragment. Mean with SEM of six replications were shown for the 2 years data (2018–2019). Asterisks and ns indicates significant and non-significant differences (*p < 0.05, ***p < 0.001, ****p < 0.0001 and ns, non-significant, ANOVA followed by Tukey’s multiple comparison as post hoc test). c Suppression of target genes, ECR and RPL19 in whole maggot and adult fruit fly after 15 days of feeding bacteria (700 μl) expressing dsRNA-ECR and dsRNA-RPL19 to maggots. Ten maggots were homogenized to obtain one RNA sample and expression was quantified with RT-qPCR and normalized against housekeeping gene actin. Each data represents a biological replicates