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ARS Home » Midwest Area » St. Paul, Minnesota » Plant Science Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #93566
Title: TRANSFORMATION OF ELITE OAT CULTIVARS

Author
item TORBERT, KIMBERLY - UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA
item Rines, Howard
item KAEPPLER, HEIDI - UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN
item MENON, GEORGE - UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN
item SOMERS, DAVID - UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA

Submitted to: American Oat Workers Conference Proceedings
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: 7/27/1998
Publication Date: N/A
Citation: N/A

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: Mature embryos of a specific oat (Avena sativa L.) have shown to be a reliable explant for initiating tissue cultures that can be genetically engineered to produce transgenic, fertile plants (Torbert et al. 1998). The purpose of this research was to investigate mature embryos from 16 elite North American spring oat cultivars for tissue culture initiation and the capability to produce transgenic plants from elite cultivars. Fifteen of the genotypes tested yielded at least some embryogenic callus that was similar in appearance to transformable callus based on our previous work. One elite cultivar, 'Belle' was utilized in determining transformation efficiency. From 30 microprojectile bombardments, 17 independent genetically engineered tissue cultures produced transgenic, fertile plants. DNA sequences designed to influence a variety of traits have been introduced into Belle. These traits include aluminum tolerance, antisense for starch composition modification, and wheat high molecular weight glutenin in oat kernels to investigate the dough making properties of oats by these proteins. These results demonstrate that mature embryo-derived tissue cultures will be useful for transforming elite oat cultivars.