Over-expression of Echinochloa frumentacea Iron Regulated Transporter 2 Gene in Indica Rice var. ASD16

Abstract

Iron (Fe) is one of the important minerals for all life forms, and its deficiency leads to serious health-related problems in humans. Rice, being a strategy II plant, uses the strategy I Fe-uptake system as well. Iron regulated transporters (IRT) primarily transport Fe from the soil to the plant. IRT2 gene expresses in roots, and its expression is up-regulated under Fe deficient condition. In the present srudy, the IRT2 gene isolated from barnyard millet, Echinochloa frumentacea Iron regulated Transporter 2 (EfIRT2), driven by a constitutive promoter was introduced into rice to improve grain Fe content in an elite rice variety, ASD16. Agrobacterium-mediated transformation of ASD16 generated 95 events, and all of them were found to be transgenic based on PCR assays. Tissue localization studies using Scanning Electron Microscopy – Energy Dispersive X-Ray (SEM-EDX) analysis showed that the relative Fe content had increased in seed tissues. Fe estimation in unpolished transgenic rice using ICP-OES indicated a marginal increase of 15% in Fe content over wild-type ASD16.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.29321/MAJ.10.000622

Pages

35 - 43

Creative Commons

Copyright

© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Madras Agricultural Students' Union in Madras Agricultural Journal (MAJ). This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited by the user.

Keywords