Abstract:Crop disease caused by soil-borne fungal pathogens is one of the major threatens to agriculture nowadays. Due to the lack of efficient control method, it is becoming a key factor to restrict sustainable development of agricultural production in China. Gene silencing (or RNA silencing, RNAi) is an important pathway in eukaryotes that regulates gene expression based on sequence homology. Gene silencingbased technology has been widely used as a new strategy for plant protection. In this review, we summarized occurrence and general prevention method of crop disease caused by soil-borne fungi, and introduced recent advances and applications of RNA silencing in crop protection. By deeply discussing potential values and problems of gene silencing technology for controlling soil-borne fungal pathogens, we point out the advantages and great importance in exploiting gene silencing-based technology for sustainable control of soil-borne fungal pathogens.