Gene Transfer to Barley

The stable transformation of crop plants belonging to the Gramineae family is of great importance for all further genetic manipulation. Since agrobacteria do not work (efficiently) with cereals the techniques of direct DNA transfer have been developed as an alternative (1). We tried different approaches of directly introducing DNA into cells and organs of barley in order to find a method for the stable integration of a foreign gene into the genome of barley with the aim to produce transgenic cell lines as well as transgenic fertile plants that inherit the new gene to their progeny.