An Improved Agrobacterium Mediated Transformation System in Wheat

Wheat is the world’s largest volume crop traded internationally. Foliar diseases are the main biotic restriction reducing yield in wheat crops. Wheat productivity can be enhanced through controlling foliar disease through the use of resistant cultivars. Plant breeders are providing considerable attention to wheat genetic improvement from the past few years to minimize losses due to pests and pathogens and also to improve the grain yield. Genetic transformation is fundamental to wheat molecular genetics and improvement through genetic engineering. There has been significant progress in Agrobacterium transformation of wheat but it is still confined mainly to a few responsive varieties due to poor understanding of the mechanism and availability of efficient techniques. This system is influenced by a number of factors including acetosyringone concentration. In present study, the pattern of interaction in between acetosyringone concentration and transformation potential was exploited for the efficient development of Agrobacterium mediated transformation system in local cultivars of wheat (Inqilab-91 and Chakwal-97). Mature embryos were used as explant sources for callus induction, which were used later in transformation experiments. Different concentrations of acetosyringone were used and it was observed in the study that transformation efficiency increases with increase in acetosyringone concentration upto 400 μM but further increase beyond this drastically reduced the transformation frequency. Maximum transformation efficiencies of 56.0 and 52.0% were obtained with 400μM of acetosyringone from Inqilab-91 and Chakwal-97 respectively.