Floral spray transformation can efficiently generate Arabidopsis transgenic plants

In this study, floral spray and floral dip were used to replace the vacuum step in the Agrobacterium-mediated transformation of a superoxide dismutase (SOD) gene into Arabidopsis. The transgene was constructed by using a CaMV 35S promoter to drive a rice cytosolic CuZnSOD coding sequence in Arabidopsis. The transgene construct was developed in binary vectors and mobilized into Agrobacterium. When Arabidopsis plants started to initiate flower buds, the primary inflorescence shoots were removed and then transformed by floral spray or floral dip. More than 300 transgenic plants were generated to assess the feasibility of floral spray used in the in planta transformation. The result indicates that the floral spray method of Agrobacterium can achieve rates of in planta transformation comparable to the vacuum-infiltration and floral dip methods. The floral spray method opens up the possibility of in planta transformation of plant species which are too large for dipping or vacuum infiltration.