Rapid Generation of Selectable Marker-Free Transgenic Rice with Three Target Genes by Co-Transformation and Anther Culture

The ‘double T-DNA’ binary vector p13HSR which harbored two independent T-DNAs, containing hygromycin phosphotransferase gene (hpt) in one T-DNA region and three target genes (hLF, SB401, RZ10) in another T-DNA region, was used to generate selectable marker-free transgenic rice by Agrobacterium-mediated transformation. The regenerated plants with both the three target genes and the selectable marker gene hpt were selected for anther culture. RT-PCR analysis indicated that target genes were inserted in rice genomic DNA and successfully transcribed. It took only one year to obtain double haploid selectable marker-free transgenic plants containing the three target genes with co-transformation followed by anther culture technique, and the efficiency was 12.2%. It was also noted that one or two target genes derived from the binary vector were lost in some transgenic rice plants.