Maintenance of male-sterile plants

Multicellular living organisms and unmodified parts thereof and – Method of introducing a polynucleotide molecule into or... – The polynucleotide alters fat – fatty oil – ester-type wax – or...

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800DIG56, 800250, 4351723, 435199, 435418, 435419, 536 232, 536 236, 536 237, 536 241, 47 58, 47DIG1, A01H 500, A01H 102, C12N 1529, C12N 1555, C12N 1582

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057508674

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BRIEF SUMMARY
FIELD OF THE INVENTION

This invention relates to a process for maintaining male-sterile plant lines that can be used for the production of hybrid seed of a crop, to maintainer plants that can be used in such a process, and to maintainer genes that can be used to produce such maintainer plants.


BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

In many, if not most, plant species, the development of hybrid cultivars is highly desired because of their generally increased productivity due to heterosis: the superior performance of hybrid individuals compared with their parents (see, e.g., Fehr (1987) "Principles of Cultivar Development, Volume 1: Theory and Technique", MacMillan Publishing Company, New York; Allard (1960) "Principles of Plant Breeding", John Wiley and Sons, Inc., New York).
The development of hybrid cultivars of various plant species depends upon the capability to achieve almost complete cross-pollination between parents. This is most simply achieved by rendering one of the parent lines male-sterile (i.e., with pollen being absent or nonfunctional), for example, by manually removing the one parent's anthers or by providing the one parent with naturally occurring cytoplasmic or nuclear genes that prevent anther and/or pollen development and/or function, using classical breeding techniques (for a review of the genetics of male-sterility in plants, see Kaul (1988) "Male Sterility in Higher Plants", Springer Verlag, New York).
For hybrid plants where the seed is the harvested product (e.g., corn and oilseed rape), it is, in most cases, also necessary to ensure that fertility of the hybrid plants is fully restored. In plants in which the male-sterility is under genetic control, this requires the use of genes that can restore male-fertility. Hence, the development of hybrid cultivars is mainly dependent on the availability of suitable and effective sterility and restorer genes.
Endogenous nuclear loci are known for most plant species that contain genotypes which effect male-sterility, and generally, such loci need to be homozygous for particular recessive alleles in order to result in a male-sterile phenotype. The presence of a dominant male-fertile allele at such loci results in male-fertility.
Recently, it has been shown that male-sterility can be induced in a plant by providing the plant with a nuclear male-sterility genotype that includes a chimaeric male-sterility gene comprising a DNA sequence (or male-sterility DNA) coding, for example, for a cytotoxic product (such as an RNase) and under the control of a promoter which is predominantly active in selected tissue of the plant's male reproductive organs. In this regard, tapetum-specific promoters, such as the promoter of the TA29 gene of Nicotiana tabacum, have been shown to be particularly useful for this purpose (Mariani et al (1990) Nature 347:737; European patent publication ("EP") 0,344,029). By providing the nuclear genome of the plant with such a male-sterility gene, an artificial nuclear male-sterility locus is created containing the artificial male-sterility genotype that results in a male-sterile plant.
In addition, it has been recently shown that male-fertility can be restored to such a nuclear male-sterile plant with a chimaeric fertility-restorer gene comprising another DNA sequence (or fertility-restorer DNA) that codes, for example, for a protein that inhibits the activity of the cytotoxic product or otherwise prevents the cytotoxic product from being active at least in the selected tissue of the plant's male reproductive organs (EP 0,412,911). For example, the barnase gene of Bacillus amyloliguefaciens codes for an RNase (Barnase) which can be inhibited by a protein (Barstar) that is encoded by the barstar gene of B. amyloliguefaciens. Hence, the barnase gene can be used for the construction of a chimaeric male-sterility gene while the barstar gene can be used for the construction of a chimaeric fertility-restorer gene. Experiments in different plant species (e.g., oilseed rape) have shown that such a chimaeric barstar gene can fully restore the m

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Stoskopf et al., Plant Breeding Theory and Practice, (1993), Cell and Molecular Biology Tools for Plant Breeding, Chapter 22, pp. 453-472.
Poehlman, Breeding Field Crops, Third Edition, Hybird Corn, pp. 473-476 (1987).
Sprague, Production of Hybrid Seed, American Society of Agronomy, Inc. (1977), pp. 685-693.

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