Co-treatment with surfactant and sonication significantly improves Agrobacterium-mediated resistant bud formation and transient expression efficiency in soybean

Soybean is a widely planted genetically modified crop around the world. However, it is still one of the most recalcitrant crops for genetic transformation due to the difficulty of regeneration via organogenesis and some factors that affect the transformation efficiency. The percentages of resistant bud formation and transient expression efficiency are important indexes reflecting the regeneration and transformation efficiency of soybean. In this study, the percentages of resistant bud formation and transient expression of β-glucuronidase (GUS) were compared after treatment with sonication or surfactant and co-treatment with both. The results showed that treatment with either sonication or surfactant increased the percentage of resistant bud formation and transient expression efficiency. The highest percentages were acquired and significantly improved when cotyledon node explants were co-treated with sonication for 2 s and surfactant at 0.02% (v:v) using two different soybean genotypes, Jack and Zhonghuang 10. The improved transformation efficiency of this combination was also evaluated by development of herbicide-tolerant soybeans with transformation efficiency at 2.5–5.7% for different genotypes, which was significantly higher than traditional cotyledonary node method in this study. These results suggested that co-treatment with surfactant and sonication significantly improved the percentages of resistance bud formation, transient expression efficiency and stable transformation efficiency in soybean.