The Selection of Transgenic Recipients from New Elite Wheat Cultivars and Study on Its Plant Regeneration System

Abstract

In the protocol of wheat transformation, to use elite wheat cultivars as exogenous gene recipients can speed up the process of commercial field applications of transgenic wheat. However, it is necessary to screen wheat cultivars with good tissue culture response (TCR) continuously from plenty of elite wheat cultivars released for wheat transformation, and it is also important to find a plant regeneration system that is suitable for these cultivars. So, the TCR of mature and immature embryos of six wheat cultivars Chuannong 11 (CN11), Chuannong 12 (CN12), Chuannong 17 (CN17), Chuannong 18 (CN18), Chuannong 19 (CN19), and Chuannong 21 (CN21), which possess superior agronomic traits, were investigated by using a good TCR wheat cultivar Bobwhite as control. The results indicated that only the immature and mature embryos of CN12, CN17, and CN18 exhibited good TCR compared with Bobwhite. No significant differences were observed between embryos of Bobwhite and of the three cultivars in TCR. Mature embryo-derived calli of CN12 were used as explants for transformation by particle bombardment of SAMDC gene. Seven transformants were obtained and the efficiency was 2.3%. This research supplies three new elite recipient cultivars for wheat transformation. The wheat plant regeneration system used in this research is different from those successful ones reported previously and it could be a reference for other wheat genotypes. Furthermore, Bobwhite and the three wheat cultivars were proved to be 1RS/1BL translocation, by methods of A-PAGE, C-banding, and genomic in situ hybridization (GISH). These results imply that probably there is some relationship between 1RS/1BL translocation and TCR of wheat embryos. So this research gives us a hint that we should pay more attention to the 1RS/1BL translocations when we screen the wheat cultivars with good TCR and also that the mechanism of the effect of 1RS/1BL translocation on TCR is worthy of being investigated.