More than 100 academics from 10 countries published the unravelled pea aphid genome this week, revealing thousands of previously unknown genes.

And now a team from the Scottish Crop Research Institute are to study the way these aphids reproduce, in a bid to develop more targeted controls.

Plant pathology researcher at SCRI Dr Brian Fenton said: "Unlocking the aphid genome sequence is another step in tackling these destructive pests. Once we gain a better understanding of how they can reproduce so quickly we can hopefully develop novel methods of controlling them and reducing the damage they cause to crops."

The massive project has been divided among various teams to look at all aspects of the aphid genome.

SCRI's team are analysing the data to try to understand more about aphids asexual reproduction habits.

Aphids ability to reproduce asexually is the reason numbers increase so rapidly during the summer. So far the project has found that many of the genes that enable asexual reproduction had made extra copies of themselves.

The next stage of the research will be to understand why and to identify new processes and pathways which could be used for new methods of controlling these pests.

The US National Human Genome Research Institute agreed to fund the project to sequence the genome in an effort to find out more about it and develop new ways of tackling it.

Work to annotate the aphid genome sequence took two years and was this week published in PLOS Biology.

Fenton's team were funded by the Royal Society of Edinburgh and worked in collaboration with labs in France and the US.

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