Research:
Using half-seed as an alternative explant in Agrobacterium-mediated soybean transformation
Shoot regeneration on half-seed explant
An improved cotyledonary node method, using an alternative explant, for Agrobacterium-mediated transformation has been developed. Soybean seed was soaked in water and after imbibition the seed was split along the hilum to obtain cotyledonary tissues that we referred to as “half-seed” explants. The half-seed method is simple and does not require seed germination in vitro thereby saving time and laboratory resources. Most importantly, with the half-seed system, no manual wounding is performed on the explant. Transformation efficiency ranged between 3.2%-8.7% based on the number of transformed events that have been confirmed in the R1 generation by Southern blot analysis.
a-1: after imbibition, soybean seed was split to obtain cotyledonary tissue with embryonic axis
a-2: embryonic axis was removed to obtain half-seed explant
