Crop Science and Agriculture

Energy crises along with environmental concerns are driving researchers to develop viable alternative fuels from renewable resources. Th e use of Brassica juncea oil as an alternative fuel suff ers from problems such as high viscosity, low volatility and poor cold temperature properties. Th e seed of Euonymus alatus produces low viscosity oil having unusual Triacylglycerol (TAGs) called acetyl Triacylglycerol (acTAGs) where the sn-3 position is esterifi ed with acetate instead of a long chain fatty acid. The enzyme Euonymous alatus diacyl glycerol acetyl transfrase (EaDacT) present in these plants is an acetyl transferase that catalyzes the transfer of an acetyl group from acetyl-CoA to Diacylglycerol (DAG) to produce acTAG. In order to reduce the viscosity of Brassica juncea oil by synthesizing acTAG, we have developed an effi cient and simple agrobacterium mediated floral dip transformation method to generate transgenic Brassica juncea plants. A binary vector containing the EaDacT gene under the transcriptional control of a glycinin promoter and with a basta selection marker was transformed into Agrobacterium tumefaciens strain GV-3101 through electroporation. Basta is a herbicide which is used as a selection marker to allow us to conveniently screen very young transgenic plants from a large number of untransformed plants. Th e basta resistant putative transgenic plants were further confi rmed by PCR. Biochemical analyses of the transgenic B. juncea seed revealed modifi edfatty acids profi le having no acetyl TAGs. Alternative strategy is in process to silence genes encoding enzymes DGAT/PDAT along with overexpression of EaDAcT, that will hopefully produce acetyl TAGs.