Abstract: To improve the iron content of rice, we have transferred the entire coding sequence of the soybean ferritin gene into two elite upland rice cultivars (Handao297 and Handao277) by using Biolistic transformation and Agrobacterium-mediated transformation. The rice seed-storage protein glutelin promoter, GluB-1, was used to drive expression of the soybean ferritin gene specifically in developing, self-pollinated seed of transgenic plants. It was confirmed that extraneous gene was integrated into rice genome by PCR and Southern blot analysis, expressed specifically in seeds by reverse transcription PCR analysis and inherited stably by PCR analysis of T1-T3 transgenic plants. Iron levels in the mature T0-T2 seeds varied from 19.0 to 62.8 礸/g dry weight and iron content of mature seeds of T0-T2 generations from most of transgenic plants was greater than 2 times of their untransformed counterparts.

Key words: upland rice, Biolistic transformation, Agrobacterium-mediated transformation, ferritin gene, Iron content