Tissue culture and transient transformation of Marestail (Conyza canadensis (L.) Cronquist)

Glyphosate resistant crops are useful to agriculture by facilitating the use of nonselective herbicides, such as RoundUp®, that have low human and environmental toxicity. The occurrence of glyphosate resistant weeds, however, has raised concern about the future utility of these crops. Conyza canadensis (L.) Cronquist (marestail or horseweed) is one such glyphosate resistant weed that has yet to be fully analyzed or established in tissue culture. Tissue culture enables the examination of physiological characteristics of a plant in an aseptic and controlled environment. For the present study, mairstail was cultured on a Murashige and Skoog based medium supplemented with 6-benzylaminopurine, and α-naphthaleneacetic acid. Plant regeneration was achieved on the same basal medium supplemented with only gibberellic acid. Glyphosate resistance could be demonstrated in the cultured tissues. The cultures could also be transformed with Agrobacterium tumefaciens without chemically inducing virulence using phenolics or glucose and resulting in a transformation frequency (transgenic events per total number of explants used) of about 13%. The tissue culture growth, preliminary glyphosate resistance data and genetic transformation data gathered in this project provide the means to further evaluate the mode of glyphosate resistance expressed by marestail.