The growth experiment of transgenic rice tolerant to iron deficiency in isolated-field

Abstract

The available iron (Fe) in the calcareous soils is very low because of high pH. Fe deficiency is the major agricultural problem all over the world. Graminaceous plants secrete mugineic acid family phytosiderophores (MAs) for Fe acquisition from the soil by chelating. Rice, which is the main crop in the world, secretes very few amount of MAs and consequently not tolerant to Fe deficiency. Barley secretes higher amount of MAs and is tolerant to Fe deficiency. We have produced several transgenic rice lines tolerant to Fe deficiency by introducing barley genes involved in MAs synthesis into rice. To further test the tolerance of these lines on farm, we performed a field experiment to evaluate these transgenic rice plants for two years. We have succeeded in the selection of the transgenic rice tolerant to Fe deficiency in the calcareous soils.