Antisense inhibition of a nuclear gene, BrDAD1, in Brassica causes male sterility that is restorable with jasmonic acid treatment.

Abstract

Male sterility is widely used for the production of hybrid seeds, but the use of genic male sterility is rather limited because of difficulty in maintaining homozygous male sterile plants. Recently, the DEFECTIVE IN ANTHER DEHISCENCE 1 (DAD1) gene, which encodes a phospholipase A1 involved in the first step of the jasmonic acid (JA) biosynthesis pathway, was isolated from a male sterile Arabidopsis mutant. To utilize this gene in Brassica crops, we characterized the BrDAD1 gene, the putative ortholog of DAD1 in Brassica rapa. Out of 25 plants transformed with an antisense gene constructed from the BrDAD1, 3 plants showed a defect of anther dehiscence at the flower bud opening stage and produced inviable pollen. One of the three showed male sterility only, but the other two showed a delay or a lack of flower opening in addition to male sterility. The male sterile and flower-opening phenotypes were rescued by the application of JA as well as linolenic acid. Furthermore, all these characteristics were inherited to the next generation. The present results demonstrate a novel control system for hybrid seed production by the use of nuclear genes.