| Summary: | Furfural acetone (FAc) is a promising alternative to currently available nematicides, and it exhibits equivalent control efficiency on root-knot nematodes with avermectin in fields. However, its effect on the reproduction of root-knot nematode is poorly understood. In this study, the natural metabolite FAc was found to exhibit reproductive toxicity on <i>Meloidogyne incognita</i> and <i>Caenorhabditis elegans</i>. The number of germ cells of <i>C. elegans</i> was observed to decrease after exposure to FAc, with a reduction of 59.9% at a dose of 200 mg/L. FAc in various concentrations induced the germ-cell apoptosis of <i>C. elegans</i>, with an increase over six-fold in the number of apoptotic germ cells at 200 mg/L. These findings suggested that FAc decreased the brood size of nematode by inducing germ-cell apoptosis. Moreover, FAc-induced germ-cell apoptosis was suppressed by the mutation of gene <i>hus-1</i>, <i>clk-2</i>, <i>cep-1</i>, <i>egl-1</i>, <i>ced-3</i>, <i>ced-4</i>, or <i>ced-9</i>. The expression of genes <i>spo-11</i>, <i>cep-1</i>, and <i>egl-1</i> in <i>C. elegans</i> was increased significantly after FAc treatment. Taken together, these results indicate that nematode exposure to FAc might inflict DNA damage through protein SPO-11, activate CEP-1 and EGL-1, and induce the core apoptosis pathway to cause germ-cell apoptosis, resulting in decreased brood size of <i>C. elegans</i>.
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