Utilization of CRES-T gene to increase seed oil content

Abstract

The application of plant biomass is one of the promising ways to realize the Zero-Waste Society. Although plant seed oil is a valuable resource of biodiesel fuels and bioplastics, only few favorable results of molecular breeding have been reported. Arabidopsis thaliana is the relative species of the major oil crop, Brassicae napus. Then we searched factors that increase seed oil content using the chimeric repressor gene silencing technology (CRES-T) and measured the oil content of the seeds of the independent Arabidopsis CRES-T plants employing nondestructive analysis using 1H-pulse NMR. One of the CRES-T line in which the chimeric repressor against unknown function of AP2/ERF transcription factor encoded by At5g07580 showed increased seed oil content average 6% with a maximum of 11%. Although oil content was not markedly increased in first-generation, oil yield per plant showed average increase of 32% with a maximum of 70% in second-generation due to increase in aerial biomass and seed yield. We are going to discuss the role of At5g07580-SRDX on the result of transcription analysis, own promoter-GUS assay and plant oil assay in rice.