Abstract
East Africa is the largest banana producing and consuming region in Africa. In particular, the East African Highland Banana serves as the major staple crop of countries like Uganda, but production is constrained by a number of serious pests and diseases. Banana breeding is a very difficult and slow process, so genetic engineering offers an alternative approach to improvement. A transformation system using intercalary meristematic tissues was developed using Agrobacterium strain EHA105 harboring the binary vector pCAMBIA2301 containing the gusA reporter gene and nptII as selectable marker. In this paper, a new transformation protocol is described that yields kanamycin-resistant, GUSexpressing banana plants from roughly 10% of the initial explants. The resulting fully-rooted transgenic plants do not appear to be chimeras since they can be stably propagated, GUS activity is observed uniformly throughout the plants including the germline cells of the meristem, and PCR and Southern blots indicate stable integration of the genes into the genome.
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.