Papaya (Carica papaya L.)

Transgenic papaya plants were initially obtained using particle bombardment, a method having poor efficiency in producing intact, single-copy insertion of transgenes. Single-copy gene insertion was improved using Agrobacterium tumefaciens . With progress being made in genome sequencing and gene discovery, there is a need for more efficient methods of transformation in order to study the function of these genes. We describe a protocol for Agrobacterium -mediated transformation using carborundum-wounded papaya embryogenic calli. This method should lead to high-throughput transformation, which on average produced at least one plant that was positive in polymerase chain reaction (PCR), histochemical staining, or by Southern blot hybridization from 10 to 20% of the callus clusters that had been co-cultivated with Agrobacterium . Plants regenerated from the callus clusters in 9 to13 mo.