Pathogen-derived transgenic resistance to soybean mosaic virus in soybean

Development of transgenic disease resistance in soybeans, despite progress in other important crop plants, has advanced slowly. In this study, transgenic soybean plants resistant to soybean mosaic virus (SMV) were obtained by transforming with the coat protein gene and the 3′-UTR from SMV. Four insertion events were detected in a T0 plant obtained by using Agrobacterium tumefaciens-mediated transformation. Self-pollination of T0 progeny yielded four homozygous transgenic lines with a single insertion event or combinations of two insertion events in the T3 generation. A single coat protein gene transcript was detected in all four transgenic lines, and virus coat protein was detected in three transgenic lines. Two transgenic lines were highly resistant to the virus. These constitute the first example of stable genetically engineered disease resistance in soybean.