Gene silencing represents a family of biotechnologies based on the interruption or suppression of gene expression at transcriptional or translational levels. As an environmentally benign and species-specific solution, gene silencing technologies (GSTs) have a great potential of being applied to the control of invasive species such as Phragmites. This presentation will discuss recent progress made in GST development for pest species in general and summarize the R&D work carried out on Phragmites in particular by a consortium of government and academic labs.