Abstract
Food security and environmental protection have become major challenges under climate change scenario. Considerable efforts
have been made to improve nitrogen use efficiency in crop plants. Codon optimization of barley alanine aminotransferase (coAlaAT) gene has been made to achieve optimal transcriptional efficiency and translational ability in wheat. Co-AlaAT was
cloned under the control of constitutive and root specific promoters and transformed into wheat (Triticum aestivum; bread
wheat). T2 generation of five putative transgenic wheat lines were analyzed at four different N fertilizer regimes (0, 75, 100
and 125 kg N/ha) in four split applications. Molecular analysis of selected wheat lines was performed through PCR and qPCR.
Transgenic wheat lines have demonstrated improvement in nitrogen use efficiency as evaluated through morpho-physiological
and biochemical means. Transgenic wheat lines exhibited higher N content, amino acids, soluble proteins, AlaAT activity, flag
leaf area, number of tillers, number of spikes, grain yield, nitrogen use efficiency and harvest index under limited N fertilizer
dose. All these experiments were conducted in wheat biotechnology lab. at NIBGE, Faisalabad during 2015-2018. It is
concluded that codon optimized alanine aminotransferase (co-AlaAT) gene may prove to be a potential candidate gene to
improve N use efficiency in wheat crop for reduction of nitrogenous fertilizer application and to cut short nitrate accumulation
in aquatic and terrestrial environment.
Moddassir Ahmed, Nasir Ahmad Saeed, M. Yasin Ashraf, Zahid Mukhtar, Shahid Mansoor. (2020) IMPROVING NITROGEN USE EFFICIENCY IN WHEAT (Triticum aestivum L.) THROUGH TRANSFORMATION OF CODON OPTIMIZED, Pakistan Journal of Agricultural Sciences, Volume 57, Issue 3.
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