RRD Naga Charan Konakalla

My interest is in studying host-pathogen interactions focusing on developing new and sustainable ways to control plant diseases. I am currently working at the Department of Plant Breeding, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Alnarp. My research focuses on Bio Nano-technology based delivery systems for precision farming and to study the small RNAs and corresponding proteins in fungal pathogenesis

Spray-induced gene silencing technology to control plant diseases.

Development of Bio-nanocarriers for the targeted delivery of pesticides/ fungicides and biologicals for precision farming (FORMAS). 

• 2018 December- Ph.D. from Department of Virology, Sri Venkateswara University (Erasmus Mundus Doctoral researcher: Agricultural University of Athens, Greece)
• 2019 August-Postdoctoral research associate at the Plant Virology lab, College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences, University of Georgia (UGA), Tifton, GA, USA.
• 2020 September- Postdoctoral fellow with Carl Tryggers foundation scholarship in Plant protection biology group at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Alnarp, Sweden.
• 2022 September-Till date- Postdoctoral Department of Plant Breeding, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Alnarp, Sweden

• Konakalla, N.C., Nitin, M., Kaldis, A., Masarapu, H., Carpentier, S. and Voloudakis, A., 2021. dsRNA Molecules From the Tobacco Mosaic Virus p126 Gene Counteract TMV-Induced Proteome Changes at an Early Stage of Infection. Frontiers in plant science, p.736.
• Konakalla, N.C., Bag, S., Deraniyagala, A.S., Culbreath, A.K. and Pappu, H.R., 2021. Induction of plant resistance in tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum) against tomato spotted wilt orthotospovirus through foliar application of dsRNA. Viruses, 13(4), p.662.
• Konakalla, N.C., Kaldis, A., Masarapu, H. and Voloudakis, A.E., 2019. Topical application of double stranded RNA molecules deriving from Sesbania mosaic virus (SeMV) CP and MP genes protects Sesbania plants against SeMV. European Journal of Plant Pathology, 155(4), pp.1345-1352.
• Konakalla, N.C., Kaldis, A., Berbati, M., Masarapu, H. and Voloudakis, A.E., 2016. Exogenous application of double-stranded RNA molecules from TMV p126 and CP genes confers resistance against TMV in tobacco. Planta, 244(4), pp.961-969.
• Kavalappara, S.R., Milner, H., Konakalla, N.C., Morgan, K., Sparks, A.N., McGregor, C., Culbreath, A.K., Wintermantel, W.M. and Bag, S., 2021. High throughput sequencing-aided survey reveals widespread mixed infections of whitefly-transmitted viruses in cucurbits in Georgia, USA. Viruses, 13(6), p.988.
• Luckew, A., Meru, G., Wang, Y.Y., Mwatuwa, R., Paret, M., Carvalho, R., Kalischuk, M., da Silva, A.L.B.R., Candian, J., Dutta, B. and Srinivasan, R., 2022. Field evaluation of Cucurbita germplasm for resistance to whiteflies and whitefly-transmitted viruses. HortScience, 57(2), pp.337-344.
• Borah, M. and Konakalla, N.C., 2021. RNAi Technology: A novel platform in crop protection. In Emerging Trends in Plant Pathology (pp. 561-575). Springer, Singapore.
• Masarapu, H. and Konakalla, N.C., 2021. Molecular mechanisms of Zika fever in inducing birth defects: an update. In Pandemic Outbreaks in the 21st Century (pp. 87-109). Academic Press.
• Hema, M. and Konakalla, N.C., 2021. Recent developments in detection and diagnosis of plant viruses. Recent Developments in Applied Microbiology and Biochemistry, pp.163-180.