A Simple and Rapid Method for Determining Transgenic Cotton Plants

Determining transgenic events is a critical step for obtaining transgenic plants as well as the later stage of application. Traditional methods, such as Northern blotting and qRT-PCR, for determining transgenic events either require radioactively labeled substrates, expensive instruments, or long-time commitments, which result in lab and time-consuming as well as expensive costs. These methods also require destroying the transgenic events. In this chapter, we present a simple and rapid method for determining transgenic cotton plants in both laboratory and field conditions. This method is based on the sensitivity of transgenic and non-transgenic plants to a specific chemical, such as antibiotics or herbicides. This method will facilitate the screening of transgenic events, save time, reduce cost, and speed up the application of transgenic technology on cotton breeding and production. More important, this is a nondestructive bioassay method; the transgenic plants can be transferred into greenhouse or field for the later study after the detection process.