Unnecessary weed growth in sugarcane fields forces plants to compete for nutrients and sunlight for survival, which most often leads to significant yield losses. As chemical herbicides cannot differentiate between crop plants and weeds, the development of herbicide-tolerant crops is anticipated. | Turkish Journal of Biology Research Article Turk J Biol (2014) 38: 439-449 © TÜBİTAK doi: Herbicide-tolerant sugarcane (Saccharum officinarum L.) plants: an unconventional method of weed removal 1 1, 1 2 1 Idrees Ahmad NASIR , Bushra TABASSUM *, Zahida QAMAR , Muhammad Aslam JAVED , Muhammad TARIQ , 1 3 1 1 Abdul Munim FAROOQ , Shahid Javed BUTT , Abdul QAYYUM , Tayyab HUSNAIN 1 National Centre of Excellence in Molecular Biology, University of the Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan 2 Agriculture Biotechnology Institute, Ayub Agriculture Research Institute, Faisalabad, Pakistan 3 Department of Horticulture, PMAS-Arid Agriculture University Rawalpindi, Rawalpindi, Pakistan Received: Accepted: Published Online: Printed: Abstract: Unnecessary weed growth in sugarcane fields forces plants to compete for nutrients and sunlight for survival, which most often leads to significant yield losses. As chemical herbicides cannot differentiate between crop plants and weeds, the development of herbicide-tolerant crops is anticipated. Four sugarcane varieties, CPF-234, CPF-213, HSF-240, and CPF-246, were used to develop glyphosate herbicide tolerance. A glyphosate-tolerant gene of 1368 bp cloned directionally under the 35S promoter with the β-glucuronidase (GUS) reporter gene was used as the transgene. Through the biolistic transformation of sugarcane, calli of all cultivars were transformed with glyphosate-tolerant gene constructs. Efficient regeneration conditions were optimized on – mg/L kinetin, – mg/L 6-benzylaminopurine (BAP), and 1 mg/L gibberellic acid (GA3). The transformants exhibited the best shoot regeneration on a medium containing 2 mg/L kinetin, 2 mg/L BAP, 2 mg/L GA3, and 1 mg/L indole-3-acetic acid. Based on initial screenings through GUS assay, the transformation efficiency was 22%, 32%, 17%, and 13% for cultivars 246, 234, 213, and 240, .
