Soybean Somatic Embryogenesis and Transformation Studies

Soybean is a legume crop and it is widely used as oilseed. For its improvement apart from conventional breeding, gene transformation followed by tissue regeneration has emerged as one of the most revolutionizing area. However, soybean has been a difficult crop for gene transfer. The low success has been attributed to poor regeneration ability and lack of compatible gene delivery methods. With these prospects an effort has been made to study the in vitro morphogenesis in soybean using variable growth regulators in different combinations and quantities for achieving higher in vitro response from different explants. During the present investigations, an effort has also been made to transfer an antisense RNA gene for YMV resistance using Agrobacterium.