View article

Barley yellow dwarf virus-PAV [barley yellow dwarf luteovirus-PAV](BYDV-PAV, GenBank accession number D11032) is the most serious and widespread virus of cereals worldwide. Natural resistance genes against this luteovirus give inadequate control, and previous attempts to introduce synthetic resistance into cereals have produced variable results. In an attempt to generate barley (cv. Golden Promise) with protection against BYDV-PAV, plants were transformed with a transgene designed to produce hairpin (hp) RNA containing BYDV-PAV sequences. From 25 independent barley lines tranformed with the BYDV-PAV hpRNA construct, nine lines showed extreme resistance to the virus and the majority of these contained a single transgene. In the progeny of two independent transgenic lines, inheritance of a single transgene consistently correlated with protection against BYDV-PAV. This protection was rated as …