Crop Transgenic Technologies and Applications

Team Name: Crop Transgenic Technologies and Applications

Research Focus: To develop novel transgenic technologies in wheat, rice and other agriculturally important crops with improved transformation efficiency and establish efficient, precise and high-throughput transformation systems; cloning and functional analyses of the genes involved in resistance to sheath blight, full rot, aphid and drought tolerance which have significant utilization values in wheat breeding program ; To create  disease-resistant, aphid-resistant, drought-tolerance  and water-saving transgenic wheat lines/cultivars by combination with   conventional breeding programs.

Research Objectives: Establishment of a precise, efficient and high-thoughput wheat and rice transformation system; Generation of  novel types of transgenic wheat lines/cultivars resistant to wheat diseases and pest insects such as sheath blight, full rot and pest insect aphids, and enhanced water-saving and drought-tolerance  with significant application prospects.

Team Chief Scientist: Dr. MA You-zhi

Dr. Ma Youzhi, born in July 1963, grade-two research fellow, graduated from Tottori University, Japan and honored the PhD. degree in 1994. He came back and worked at the Institute of Crop Sciences, CAAS in 1995. Currently, he is the dean of Department of Molecular Biology at Institute of Crop Sciences, CAAS, and director of Key Laboratory of Wheat Biology and Genetic Breeding, Chinese Ministry of Agriculture, and an executive member of Crop Science Society of China. Engaged in wheat molecular biology and genetic engineering, Dr. Ma is the leader of several projects such as the National Transgenic Research Initiative “Cultivation of New Varieties of Stress-Resistance Transgenic Wheat”, as well as the National Natural Science Foundation and 863 Program. In 2011, he was honored as the “National Outstanding Agricultural Research Talent” due to his great contribution in the related field.  His team  has made significant progress in cloning and molecular analysis of genes involved in both abiotic stress tolerance and biotic stress resistance, understanding the mechanisms underlying these abiotic stress tolerance, as well as in generation of drought-tolerance and water-saving novel transgenic wheat lines/cultivars over the past five years. His lab has cloned a number of novel  stress-resistant genes with independent intellectual property rights and significant utilization values, and successfully generated  transgenic wheat lines/cultivars with improved water-saving and drought-tolerance performance  which showed significant application prospects in wheat breeding program.  After proof of concept in the green-house, 4 transgenic wheat lines have  already entered into environmental release phase for large-scale field test. As the first or corresponding author, he has published more than 70 papers, including over 30 SCI indexed papers in international peer-reviewed journals, invented over 20 patents, of which , 8 invention patents were authorized.

Team Members: ZhANG Zeng-yan, XIA Lan-qin, YE Xing-guo, LIN Zhi-shan, CHEN Ming, XU Zhao-shi, WANG Yan-xia, DU Li-pu, WEI Xue-ning, DU Wen-ming, SUI Yi, LI Wei-wei.