Fast recovery of transgenic submergence tolerant rice cultivars of North-East India by early co-cultivation of <Emphasis Type="Italic">Agrobacterium</Emphasis> with pre-cultured callus

Agro-climatic conditions of North-East India are very complex and rice cultivars present in the region have been adapted to grow under harsh environmental conditions. Germplasm present in the region is considered to possess several important and unique traits that are of importance in rice improvement programs. Genetic engineering is a powerful tool to introduce new traits into crop plants. However, not much information is available on the methods to introduce foreign genes into North-East rice cultivars. Therefore, the main objective of this study is to develop transformation procedures for fast recovery of transgenic plants from North-East rice cultivars. To achieve this objective, a systematic study was carried out to identify media components and culture conditions for efficient embryogenic callus induction from the mature seeds and differentiation of callus into plantlets from two North-East deep water rice cultivars, Taothabi and Khongan. Also, role of preculture of callus on Agrobacterium-mediated transformation was studied. Co-cultivation of Agrobacterium with 1–5 days precultured callus was found to result in high frequency of transformation. Detailed characterization of transgenic lines confirmed stable integration of transgenes and expression of reporter gfp gene. The whole process starting from callus induction to regenerating of transgenic rice plants that can be established in the soil was achieved in about 35–45 days. The procedures developed were found to be applicable to a popular variety IR 64. Therefore, methods developed in this study should be useful not only to introduce new traits quickly but also to validate the function(s) of several candidate gene(s) identified under the functional genomics of rice.