Transgenic oat plants obtained at high efficiency by microprojectile bombardment of leaf base segments

A reproducible and efficient system has been developed for the production of transgenic plants of Avena sativa L. using microprojectile bombardment. Freshly isolated or one day old led base segments of young seedlings were used as starting material. These explants were bombarded with the plasmid pDB1 containing the uidA gene under control of the actin-l promoter from rice and the selectable marker gene par controlled by the CaMV 35S promoter. From about 200 bombarded explants ten regenerants survived different selection procedures including repeated herbicide spraying. All R-0 plants showed the integration of the foreign genes into their genomes confirmed by Southern blot analysis. The transgenic plants were morphologically normal and mainly fertile. Pollen and progeny analyses provided evidence for Mendelian inheritance of the introduced genes to the next generation.