Agrobacterium Mediated Transformation in Rice: A Novel Approach to Produce Agronomically Superior Transgenics

Abstract

Rice the most important staple grain with second highest worldwide production has offered a great potential for biotechnological advances, categorized broadly in areas like transgenics, structural and functional genomics and marker-assisted breeding to provide with vital breakthroughs to achieve improvements in both quality and quantity in a sustainable manner. The ever increasing demand, increasing anthropogenic activities has posed a challenge to boost the production of rice. To cope of with this alarming situation, the advent of genetic engineering has been utilized to remove natural barriers through gene transfer/exchange. Since then, sequences from various sources like bacteria, viruses and eukaryotic systems were used to develop transgenic crop varieties. Gene transfer techniques like direct DNA transfer through particle bombardment, polyethylene glycol or electroporation and indirectly mediated by Agrobacterium are increasingly applied. Unfortunately, DNA delivered by direct methods is often integrated into the genome as rearranged or multiple copies, presumably as a result of which the expression pattern of the gene of interest is often aberrant or unstable. In contrast to this, Agrobacterium mediated transformation system offers higher transformation efficiency with discrete, unrearranged segments of DNA being inserted at fairly low copy number. Achievements, to date, through Agrobacterium mediated transfer have surpassed all previous expectations and with the development of this successful technique for genetic improvement the future is even more promising.