The goal of this project is to advance our knowledge of the reniform nematode-soybean pathosystem and thereby support the development of improved soybean genotypes. A virus-induced gene silencing (VIGS) system has been developed and used in soybean to identify candidate genes in pathogens of soybean that are critical for resistant and susceptible plant responses. These candidate prospects can be tested in the VIGS system to see if they affect the parasitic success of reniform nematodes. The VIGS system presents a relatively easy way to silence candidate nematode or plant genes identified to be important, providing a very useful measure to assess multiple potential targets to silence in...