1835 - 2707 Regeneration and genetic transformation of Tossa Jute ( Corchorus olitorius L . )

The experiment was conducted to establish an efficient and reproducible protocol for the plant regeneration and genetic transformation, which can be used for the improvement of tossa Jute (Corchorus olitorius L.). It was demonstrated that the percent of seeds germination in agar based medium found to be very low (43.1%) , as compared to clinical cotton supported MS liquid medium, which was found to be very high (97.6%) and the highest percentage of root initiation was recorded for the variety O-9897 (53.6%) which was statistically identical by variety O-72 (49.4%) .The performance of varieties in A. tumefaciens showed significant difference in respect of number of explants produced shoot and percent shoot regeneration. Variety O-9897 gave the best performance as compared to variety O-72. In transformed explants, GUS reporter gene was expressed showing blue color in the explant tissues. Non-transformed explants did not show any color. Variety O-9897 showed the highest response to GUS assay (86.6%) as compared to O-72 (80.0%). This efficent regeneration and transformation system can be further used for the improvement of Jute quality using other useful genes.