Egyptian cotton plays a major role in Egypt's economy. It has been chosen because of it's
unique characteristics and it's significance to the Egyptian economy. Second, the heavy
use of pesticides to protect it causes a lot of damage to humans, livestock, natural
enemies, aquatic organisms and overall disturbance to the environmental balance. Besides,
these chemicals are often inadequate in most prophylactic applications and tolerant or
resistant insects escape the treatments. Biocontrol agents are environmentally safe. The
emergence of resistant pests is less likely, especially if resistance mechanisms are
incorporated into the plant genome and new generations of transgenic plants are produced. Bacillus
thuringiensis (Bt) represents the major bacterial toxin against many lepidopteran,
coleopteran, and dipteran insects. However, the application of the fermented products of
this bacterium suffers from washing by rain or overhead irrigation and inactivation by
radiation from sunlight. The decision to incorporate the Bt toxin gene into plant genome,
not only protects the toxin from inactivation, but also the toxin will be produced by the
target tissue at a high concentration, to inhibit the insects instantly and prevent their
escape or emergence of resistant insects.
OBJECTIVES
• Identification and cloning of a modified local Bt
toxin gene to allow the maximum expression of the toxin protein into the cotton plants.
• Evaluation of different protease inhibitors for
insecticidal activities.
• Identification of tissue-specific and other promoters from
Egyptian cotton cultivars to be used in localizing the expression of desirable insecticide
gene(s).
• Cloning of the Bt toxin gene and/or protease
inhibitor gene(s) into the Ti-plasmid vector.
• Transformation and regeneration of transgenic cotton
plants expressing Bt and/or protease inhibitor gene(s).
• Testing of regenerated transgenic plants under
greenhouse and possibly field conditions for insect damage tolerance.
|
