Cotton Improvement
for Heat & Salt Stress Tolerance

The Egyptian cotton culture and industry started to develop in Egypt since the 1820s. Improving cotton varieties cultivated in different locations in the delta region and new reclaimed area is considered a national priority. The aim is to increase the profitability of cotton for cotton growers, and meet the combative edge with other crops with a major target to increase the total cotton cultivated areas at new lands in Egypt with quality and quantity cotton production per feddan.

The target of this project is to use advanced recombinant DNA technology to preserve cotton germplasm quality, and increase its productivity by tolerating environmental condition (heat and salt) for the sensitive varieties with high quality fiber to maintain fiber quality and quantity when cultivated in new reclaimed areas. According to the predicted five year strategy for Egyptian cotton strategies and in coordination with the Cotton Research Institute tested new hybrids and new introduced cotton varieties, targeted varieties were chosen for improvement of Egyptian cotton tolerance to heat and salt stress using recombinant DNA technology. Final field testing of the produced transgenic cotton hybrids will be supervised by AGERI and the Cotton Research Institute (CRI).

•  Construction of libraries from Egyptian extra long and long staple cotton varieties.

•  Identification and isolation of heat tolerance gene families and salt stress gene families using map based cloning strategies.

•  Developing cotton transformation system for identified genes.

•  Developing a regeneration system for Gossypium barbadense targeted varieties.

•  Conviron, greenhouse and confined field testing of transgenic cotton plants.

ACHIEVEMENTS

•  Isolation of megabase genomic DNA from cotton tissue.

•  Purification and size fractionation of isolated megabase DNA.

•  Preparation of bacterial transformation system using different vectors for large fragment cloning.

•  Characterization of constructed library, purification and proofing of isolated clones, preparing a safe system for screening.

•  Isolation and characterization of available stress genes (HSP, salt-tolerance and drought genes).

•  Study of key proteins and their genes responsible for salt, drought and heat stress tolerance and insect resistance.

•  Establishment of regeneration and transformation systems for Egyptian cotton varieties.