PLANT CELL BIOTECHNOLOGY AND MOLECULAR BIOLOGY

Plant genetic engineering is now a powerful and invaluable tool in plant biology for introducing new genetic information into plant species as well as a useful method for the improvement of important crops. New techniques have recently been used to transform monocot plant species. Cost-effective and high-throughput transformation systems are essential for major cereal crops such as rice and barley. A simple method has been developed for transformation of barley using Agrobacterium infection of ovules. For this purpose, the bacterial cells were injected into ovary by a very fine insulin needle at four different floral developmental stages. This is the first report on the production of transgenic barley plants by the macroinjection of Agrobacterium cells into barley ovaries. The results indicated that the developmental stage is an important parameter in transformation efficiency in this technique. The lowest efficiency was observed when the ear was completely enclosed in the sheath of the flag leaf (35%). The efficiency of transformation in other developmental stages was up to 50%. This is the highest efficiency ever reported for barley transformation. All transgenic plants were fertile and showed no somaclonal variation and albino plants were also not observed. This method is an economical way to produce vigorous transgenic barley plants in terms of labor and time saving.