Production of agronomically superior transgenic rice plants using Agrobacterium transformation methods: Present status and future perspectives

Almost ten years have elapsed since the initiation of experiments on rice transformation using Agrobacterium tumefaciens. Chen et al. successfully transformed rice using this method, but transformation efficiency was low. After Hiei et al. reported high efficiency of Agrobacterium-mediated production of fertile and heritable transgenic rice plants, this technology was adopted by many laboratories and is now in widespread use. Agrobacterium-mediated transformation has several advantages, including higher transformation efficiency, ability to transfer large pieces of DNA with minimal rearrangement, integration of relatively lower number of transgene copies, and low experimental costs. The success and future prospects of this technique for the genetic improvement of rice with respect to several agronomically important traits are addressed in this article.