Advanced plant biotechnology

Plant biotechnology encompasses a range of techniques founded on the principles of cellular totipotency, tissue culture and plant transformation used to tailor plants to particular requirements including climate resiliency. The NRC's Aquatic and Crop Resource Development Research Centre team in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, has a long history of working with plant tissue culture, plant transformation and crop improvement.

Efficient plant transformation is performed for many plant species but, even with successful transformation, some elite and climate-resilient genotypes remain unresponsive. The NRC provides research and development support and collaboration opportunities to the plant research community, as well as experimental strategies that lead to the production and commercialization of plants expressing many useful genes. Our strategies emphasize the beneficial effects of plant biotechnology on food security, human health, the environment and conservation of biodiversity.

What we offer

We develop and use plant tissue culture and transformation methods in many species, including brassica species, cereals and legumes to enhance your research and crop improvement capabilities.

Helping the plant research community

The creation of new crop varieties requires us to detect and map genes, discover their functions, then modify the genes of the particular plant to obtain specific traits of interest. To help with this, our team applies the following plant transformation methods, in combination with improving tissue culture conditions and varying methods depending on the species or its genetic background:

• Biolistic
• Agrobacterium
• Electroporation
• Polyethylene glycol and nano carrier-mediated delivery

Transformation capabilities

We use biolistic and Agrobacterium-mediated transformation methods and provide independent transgenic events as rooted plantlets.

We currently transform the following crops:

• Cereals: spring wheat, winter wheat, durum, oat, barley
• Oilseeds: Brassica species (B. napus, B. carinata, B. juncea), camelina
• Pulses: pea, chickpea, fava bean, lupine, lentil
• Fruits and vegetables: tomato

Contact us today to discuss a potential collaborative or support project.

Other tissue culture methodologies

Contact us about other tissue culture methodologies and species, and for information about our capabilities including construct design and assembly, and transgenic event confirmation.

Our advisory services

• Transformation of new crops or genotypes
• Design of guide RNAs
• Protoplast-based validation of editing efficiency
• Assembly of constructs
• Experimental design for plant transformation

Fees

Fees vary depending on the crop species, transformation method and applications.