Abstract:

Agrobacterium tumefaciens-mediated approach is an effectively and widely used to introduce foreign DNA into plants. However, there were few reports published on ramie transformation mediated by Agrobacterium tumefaciens up to date. In the present study, transgenic ramie containing Bt gene were obtained by our highly efficient Agrobacterium-mediated transformation system using ramie Luzhuqing. Three T₀ plants of transgenic ramie were chosen for further experiments and were transplanted into the fields. Laboratory assay of artificial infestation and the survey on agronomic traits and quality traits of T₀ plants were conducted. The results showed that T₀ transgenic plants exhibited more excellent pest resistance than the controls, and some were significantly superior to the controls. In addition, T₀ transgenic plants maintained the main agronomic traits, such as plant height, stem diameter, rate of effective tiller, raw fiber weight, fiber production ratio from stem and fiber production ratio from phloem, and quality traits, such as strength, filament breaking tenacity, fiber fineness, fineness uniformity and glue content of raw fiber in Luzhuqing. PCR and Southern blotting analysis showed that T₁ plants contained Bt gene, which indicated that Bt gene could be stably inherited. T₁ plants in the fields performed highly pest resistance compared with non-transgenic plants.

Key words: Ramie, Transformation, Bt gene, Pyrameis indica（HerBst）, Agrobaterium tumefaciens