Genetic transformation of durum wheat ( Triticum durum desf.) through particle bombardment of scutellar tissues

Abstract

This is the first report of the production of transgenic durum wheat. A transformation system for common wheat through particle bombardment of scutellar tissues of immature embryos was successfully applied to emmer wheat. Three emmer wheats, Triticum durum var. reichenbachii, T. durum var. agricunum and T. aethiopicum Jakubz., were used in the transformation experiments. The scutellar tissues isolated from immature seeds were bombarded with a plasmid, pDM302 containing the bialaphos-resistant gene (bar) under control of the rice actin 1 gene (Act1) promoter. In T. dumm var. agricunum, 25 bialaphos-resistant plants were independently regenerated from each green-spotted calli. On the other hand, no bialaphosresistant plants were recovered from the other two emmer wheat, T. durum var. reichenbachii and T. aethiopicum. Most regenerated plants grew into mature and fertile plants. The integration and inheritance of the bar gene were confirmed by the PCR amplification and Southern analysis in T0 and T1 plants. All 25 plants showed the positive band of the bar gene. The frequency of transformation was 1.17% (25 independent transformants/2144 immature embryos).