Dicer 1 of cleaves plant viral dsRNA in vitro and provides tolerance in plants against virus infection.

Most of the viral diseases of plants are caused by RNA viruses which drastically reduce crop yield. In order to generate resistance against RNA viruses infecting plants, we isolated the dicer 1 protein (CaDcr1), a member of RNAse III family (enzyme that cleaves double stranded RNA) from an opportunistic fungus . In vitro analysis revealed that the CaDcr1 cleaved dsRNA of the coat protein gene of cucumber mosaic virus (genus family ).