The puroindoline genes (Pina and Pinb) losely linked on the short arm of the 5D chromosome (Hardness locus (Ha)) of hexaploid wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) are of great importance to wheat and product quality. In this study, the barley cultivar Harrington was transformed with wheat gene pina and pinb by particle bombardment and performed in order to develop softer barley lines. The result, an efficiency of 3.9% of the bombarded calli regenerated transgenic plants. Each transgenic event was obtained from the callus of a different immature embryo. They showed the multiple shoots compared with control (no bombardment). Two plants from T0 lines were PCR positive for only the 'soft type' pinb transgene, 10 plants were positive for the 'soft type' pina transgene only, whereas they did not show both 'soft type' pina and pinb transgene. These results supply more evidence to support the hypothesis that puroindolines are potential genes for barley grain hardness and used to be suitable target for the production of transgenic barley plants to their availability biolistic transformation system.

• Kyung-Hee Kim(Dept. of Plant Biotechnology, Dongguk University)
• Jun-Cheol Moon(Institute of Life Science & Natural Resources, Korea Univ)
• Byung-Moo Lee(Dept. of Plant Biotechnology, Dongguk University) Corresponding Author