April 29, 2011

Source: Crop Biotech Update

Cairo University scientist Salah El-Din El-Assal and colleagues developed early flowering transgenic barley lines for producers to enable planting multiple crops within one season and maximize production. The transgene (AtCRY2) for early flowering came from Arabidopsis and was introduced to commercially important barley varieties (El-Dwaser and El-Taif) using a gene gun.

The transformation was confirmed using PCR, RT-PCR and western blot analysis. The transformation efficiency was 5.6% and 3.4% for El-Dwaser and El-Taif cultivars, respectively. The transgenic barley plants exhibited early flowering and day length insensitivity, which were not observed in the nontransgenic lines. The transgenic plants exhibited flowering more than 25 days earlier than the parental cultivars under short day conditions.

Full paper: http://www.landesbioscience.com/journals/gmcrops/El-AssalGMC2-1.pdf

Website: http://www.uscanola.com/

Published: April 29, 2011