Effect of antifungal genes expressed in transgenic pea (Pisum sativum L.) on root colonization with Glomus intraradices

Pathogenic fungi have always been a major problem in agriculture. One of the effective methods for controlling pathogen fungi to date is the introduction of resistance genes into the genome of crops. It is interesting to find out whether the induced resistance in crops will have a negative effect on non-target organisms such as root colonization with the AM fungi. The objective of the present research was to study the influence of producing antifungal molecules by four transgenic pea (Pisum sativum L.) lines expressing PGIP gene from raspberry, VST-stilbene synthase from vine, a hybrid of PGIP/VST and bacterial Chitinase gene (Chit30) from Streptomyces olivaceoviridis respectively on the colonization potential of Glomus intraradices. Four different experiments were done in greenhouse and climate chamber, colonization was observed in all replications. The following parameters were used for evaluation: frequency of mycorrhization, the intensity of mycorrhization, the average presence of arbuscules within the colonized areas and the presence of arbuscules in the whole root system which showed insignificant difference between transgenic and non-transgenic plants. The root/shoot ratio exhibited different values according to the experiment condition. Compared with negative non-transgenic control all transgenic lines showed the ability to establish symbiosis and the different growth parameters had insignificant effect due to mycorrhization. The results of the present study proved that the introduced pathogen resistance genes did not affect the mycorrhization allocations in pea.