Engineering nitrogen use efficiency with alanine aminotransferase.

• Author(s) / Creator(s)

  • Johnson, S.J.
  • Carroll, R.T.
  • Vidmar, J.J.
  • Stroeher,V.
  • Taylor, G.T.
  • Good, A.G.
  • DePauw, M.
  • Lu, Z.
  • Savidov, N.

• Nitrogen (N) is the most important factor limiting crop productivity worldwide. The ability of plants to acquire N from applied fertilizers is one of the critical steps limiting the efficient use of nitrogen. To improve N use efficiency, genetically modified plants that overexpress alanine aminotransferase (AlaAT) were engineered by introducing a barley AlaAT cDNA driven by a canola root specific promoter (btg26). Compared with wild-type canola, transgenic plants had increased biomass and seed yield both in the laboratory and field under low N conditions, whereas no differences were observed under high N.The transgenics also had increased nitrate influx. These changes resulted in a 40% decrease in the amount of applied nitrogen fertilizer required under field conditions to achieve yields equivalent to wild-type plants

• Date created

  2007

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Nitrogen
  • Fertilizers
  • Plant genetic engineering
  • Barley
  • Agricultural productivity
  • Transgenic plants
  • Crop yields
  • Crops and nitrogen

• Type of Item

  Article (Published)

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R3K06X43T

• License

  Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 International