Agrobacterium-mediated sorghum transformation

Abstract

Agrobacterium tumefaciens was used to genetically transform sorghum. Immature embryos of a public (P898012) and a commercial line (PHI391) of sorghum were used as the target explants. The Agrobacterium strain used was LBA4404 carrying a 'Super-binary' vector with a bar gene as a selectable marker for herbicide resistance in the plant cells. A series of parameter tests was used to establish a baseline for conditions to be used in stable transformation experiments. A number of different transformation conditions were tested and a total of 131 stably transformed events were produced from 6175 embryos in these two sorghum lines. Statistical analysis showed that the source of the embryos had a very significant impact on transformation efficiency, with field-grown embryos producing a higher transformation frequency than greenhouse-grown embryos. Southern blot analysis of DNA from leaf tissues of T0 plants confirmed the integration of the T-DNA into the sorghum genome. Mendelian segregation in the T1 generation was confirmed by herbicide resistance screening. This is the first report of successful use of Agrobacterium for production of stably transformed sorghum plants. The Agrobacterium method we used yields a higher frequency of stable transformation that other methods reported previously.