Indian Mustard [Brassica juncea (L.) Czern.]

All economically important Brassica species have been successfully transformed using Agrobacterium tumefaciens . Although different tissues have been used as explants, hypocotyls remain the most desirable explants for Brassica tissue culture owing to their amenability to regeneration. Young explants excised from 3- to 4-d-old seedlings have exhibited optimal regeneration potential; the addition of adjuvants such as silver nitrate to the selection medium is necessary to achieve high efficiency of transformation. This chapter describes an Agrobacterium -mediated transformation protocol for Indian mustard based on inoculation of hypocotyls. The selectable marker gene used encodes for neomycin phosphotransferase II (nptII ), and the selection agent is kanamycin.