Transformation von Perlhirse zur Verbesserung der Pilzresistenz

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Horst Lörz (†)
• Subject Area: Plant Breeding and Plant Pathology
• Term: from 2003 to 2008
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 5396135

Pearl millet is the sixth most important crop world-wide and the main food source for the world's poorest and most food-insecure people in Africa and India. It is a high yielding cereal, tolerant to drought and can be grown in arid areas where maize and even sorghum fail. In Africa alone a total of 13.330.168 t pearl millet were produced during the harvest period of 2001 (FAO, 2001).Pearl millet is susceptible to many fungal diseases, for example downy mildew (Dm) caused by Sclerospora graminicola. Infection with this fungus causes yield losses up to 30% every year (Safeeulla, 1976).Due to the poor nutrition situation in developing countries and the expanding desertification, it is of great interest to develop high-yielding and pathogen resistant pearl millet lines to help attain food security. In addition to classical breeding methods, genetic engineering is a promising approach to insert useful traits into plants. Besides, the use of pesticides to combat fungal attack can be reduced, which results in the preservation of the environment.Efficient regeneration and transformation systems, which are essential prerequisites for the proposed project, have been established in our group (Oldach et al., 2001; Girgi et al., 2002).The aim of the project is the production of fungal resistant pearl millet plants. The already established regeneration and transformation methods will be utilised to introduce fungal resistance genes like those encoding for antimicrobial proteins, defensins, chitinases and glucanases into susceptible pearl millet lines. The improvement of the resistance of transgenic pearl millet lines will be tested by phytopathological assays under laboratory conditions and later in controlled field experiments.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Namibia, South Africa
• Participating Persons: Dr. Martha Kandawa-Schulz; Dr. Maretha O´ Kennedy