Rice, indica (Oryza sativa L.)

Abstract

Indica varieties, which are generally recalcitrant to tissue culture and transformation, occupy 80% of rice cultivation area in the world. Therefore, transformation method for indica rice must be improved greatly so that global rice production would take full advantage of cutting-edge biotechnology. An efficient protocol for indica transformation mediated by Agrobacterium tumefaciens is hereby described. Immature embryos collected from plants in a greenhouse are cocultivated with A. tumefaciens after pretreatment with heat and centrifuging. The protocol was successfully tested in many elite indica cultivars such as IR8, IR24, IR58025B, IR64, IR72, Suweon 258, and Nanjing 11, yielding between 5 and 15 of independent transgenic plants per immature embryo. The use of immature embryos is recommended because gene transfer to them could be much more efficient and much less genotype dependent than gene transfer to callus.