Comparing the agronomic and grain quality characteristics of transgenic rice lines expressing crylAb vs. non-trans genie controls

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate and compare the agronomic and grain quality attributes of three advanced backcross-derived transgenic rice lines expressing synthetic crylAb gene vs. non-transgenic control in a Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) under field conditions. The data exhibited that transgenic rice lines, Neda and Nemat were higher in height, earlier in maturity and highly resistant to striped stem borer (Chilo suppressalis) in comparing with non-transgenic varieties. In contrast, no significant difference was observed for transgenic Khazar as compared to its control, except for 1000-grain weight. Laboratory tests for grain physicochemical properties showed no significant variations between transgenic lines and non-transgenic controls. However, some variations for traits like Amylose Content (AC) and Gel Consistency (GC) were seen for transgenic Neda and Khazar, respectively. As regards the rice striped stem borer natural infestation, field-release experiment indicated that all three transgenic rice lines conferred a very high degree of resistance to rice striped stem borer as compared to non-transgenic check varieties. © 2009 Asian Network for Scientific Information.