Development of a simple and effective protocol for Agrobacterium tumefaciens mediated leaf disc transformation of commercial tomato cultivars.

The transformation of tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) through Agrobacterium tumefaciens is still far from being routine, particularly when it comes to commercial varieties. In the present paper, we present an efficient and simple protocol for leaf disc transformation of three Vietnamese tomato cultivars (DM8, MTS, FM372C) by comparing shoot regeneration media for expanding leaves and examining different parameters of inoculation, co-culture and selection conditions. The present transformation method requires neither feeder layers of cell suspension cultures nor pre-culture. The data clearly show that appropriate cytokinin- and auxin combinations and concentrations provide competent tissues for transformation. Supplementing of 8 µM trans-zeatin and 5 µM indoleacetic acid (IAA) into pre-treatment, inoculation and co-culture media resulted in higher frequency of transformation and stronger GUS-expression than that of media supplemented with 4 µM trans-zeatin and 2 µM IAA. The experiments also exhibited that tomato leaf tissues were more sensitive to glufosinate after inoculation with Agrobacteria compared to the untreated controls, so a more sophisticated scheme for the glufosinate selection had to be established.