Evaluations on agronomic traits of rice transgenic lines

This study was conducted to evaluate the performances of rice transgenic lines along with their wild types in terms of agronomic traits. A total of 32 rice transgenic lines, through previously conducted collaborative researches between molecular biologists and conventional rice breeders, were selected as promising lines. As the introduced functional genes, 17 genes, which were putatively related with high yield, disease and herbicide resistance, abiotic stress tolerance, and diversifying endosperm starch components, were transformed into three Japonica cultivars, Nipponbare, Nagdongbyeo, and Dongjinbyeo. The transgenic lines exhibited significantly deviated performances from their wild types on agronomic traits such as days to heading, culm length and yield potential. Multivariate analyses on transgenic lines to the evaluated agronomic traits also indicated random manner of phenotypic deviations from their wild type in terms of deviation directions and degrees. Our results suggested that, therefore, breeding strategies to control unexpected deleterious phenotypic performances among transgenic lines would be critical as much as the functions and proper expressions of the transformed genes.