Stability of sheath blight resistance in transgenic ASD16 rice lines expressing a rice chi11 gene encoding chitinase

Development of transgenic plants by introducing defense genes is one of the strategies to engineer disease resistance. Transgenic ASD16 rice plants harbouring rice chitinase chi11 gene, belonging to a PR-3 group of defense gene conferring sheath blight (Rhizoctonia solani Kuhn) resistance, were used in this study. Three T2 homozygous lines (ASD16-4-1-1, 5-1-1, and 6-1-1) were identified from seven putative (T0) transgenic lines expressing chi11 using Western blotting analysis. The inheritance of sheath blight resistance in those lines was studied over generations. The stability of chi11 expression up to T4 generation in all the three homozygous lines was proved by Western blot and the stability of sheath blight resistance in the homozygous lines was proved up to T4 generation using detached leaf and intact leaf sheath assays. Among the three homozygous lines tested, ASD16-4-1-1 showed consistent results in all the generations and gave a better protection against the sheath blight pathogen than the other two lines.