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Triticeae Genomics and Genetics
TGG 2010, Vol.1, No.2
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Invited Review Open Access
Genetic Transformation of Wheat (
Triticum aestivum
L): A Review
Razzaq Abdul
1
, Zhiying Ma
1
, Haibo Wang
2
1. Agricultural University of Hebei, Baoding, 071000
2. Hebei Academy of Agriculture and Forestry Sciences, Shijiazhuang, 050051
Corresponding author email: mzhy@hehau.edu.cn;
Authors
Triticeae Genomics and Genetics 2010, Vol.1 No.2 DOI:
10.5376/tgg.2010.01.0002
Received: 10 May., 2009
Accepted: 25 May., 2009
Published: 30 Jun., 2009
This article was first published in the Molecular Plant Breeding (Regular Print Version), and here was authorized to redistribute under the terms of the Creative
Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Preferred citation for this article as:
Abdul et al, 2004, Genetic Transformation of Wheat (
Triticum aestivum
L): A Review, Molecular Plant Breeding, 2(4): 457-464
Abstract
Gradual progress made in genetic transformation of wheat is presented in this paper. Information on promoters, antibiotic,
herbicide and auxotrophic markers, and various traits of wheat modified through genetic transformation, is provided. In addition the
methods used for wheat transformation are discussed. Though significant efforts have been made for genetic transformation of wheat
mainly through particle bombardment method but transformation efficiency is still low for mass production of fertile transgenic
plants. Studies on the inheritance of transgenes and its incorporation into commercial elite cultivars are not significant.
Agrobacterium
mediated transformation seems to have better prospects for wheat transformation in future due to its advantages over
particle bombardment.
In planta
transformation of wheat tissues seems possible only with
Agrobacterium
.
Keywords
Agrobacterium
mediated transformation, Biolistic, Promoters, Selectable markers
Wheat is the most widely grown and consumed food
crop of the world. Conventional breeding coupled
with improved farm management practices led to a
significant increase in wheat production. But such
gains/increase cannot continue to cope with increasing
food demands of rapidly growing world population
that will cause 40% greater demand for wheat than the
current level (Rosegrant et al., 1997) in the year 2020.
So the world wheat production will have to increase
1.6% to 2.6% annually. This does not seem feasible
with conventional plant breeding strategies that are
restricted due to gene pool availability, species barrier
and other biological limitations in addition to being a
slow process. Application of recombinant DNA
technology and its allied disciplines certainly hold a
great promise to augment wheat production.
DNA technology made it possible to genetically alter
the crops through
Agrobacterium
. However genetic
manipulation of monocotyledons especially cereals
including wheat was found difficult through
Agrobacterium
and alternate transformation methods
were applied to transform the cereals. Wheat was the
last among cereals to be genetically modified due to
its inherent difficulties associated with gene delivery
into regenerable explants and recovery of plantlets
with introduced transgenes in addition to its larger
genome size.
Successful wheat crop transformation involves the
transfer of a gene into a suitable explant, integration
and expression of transgene into the host genome and
regeneration of the fertile transgenic plants from the
transformed tissues. The efficiency of stable
transformation is strongly dependent on genotype,
explant source, medium composition and transformation
method. Initially wheat transformation was obtained by
direct gene transfer methods into protoplast from
cultured embryonic cells (Lr
ö
z et al., 1985) with low
transformation efficiency. Difficulties involved in
establishing and maintaining long-term culture conditions
accompanied with a little plant regeneration limited
transformation of wheat.
1 Transformation methods
A transformation method or delivery system involves
the use of several technologies and requires a vector
that has the capacity to shuttle isolated genetic
fragments into a viable host cell. Several methods are
employed to deliver foreign gene into wheat genome.